ICE Service Group on Monday denied patent infringement claims made in a lawsuit from a competitor, instead accusing the company of “brazen industrial espionage.”
Louisiana-based PacTec, which makes industrial containment bags used at government and commercial radioactive waste cleanup sites, filed its lawsuit in June in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. PacTec claimed Pennsylvania-based ICE and two affiliated companies willfully violated its patents for bags used to collect and ship gravel, soil, and debris from demolition. That includes employing PacTec technology for production of bags at one ICE plant in Tennessee, according to the lawsuit. PacTec is seeking an injunction against ICE, stopping it from using the patents, and other damages.
In a formal response to the lawsuit Monday, ICE Service Group denied it is infringing upon PacTec patents or causing others to do so. The defendant said PacTec is not entitled to any injunction because it has not shown it has suffered any harm from alleged patent infringements.
The company also said a PacTec employee impersonated an Energy Department official in order to glean ICE trade secrets and take photographs of its haulage bags. In spring 2018, ICE Service contracted with Waste Control Specialists to move hazardous and radioactive materials from the Department of Energy’s Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in New York state. In May, ICE claimed, the PacTec employee went to the Port of Albany, where the materials were being loaded, and presented credentials akin to DOE identification, in order to get access to look at the ICE shipment.
The Energy Department and PacTec did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Both PacTec and ICE are subcontractors to Energy Department and nuclear plant decommissioning projects, assisting in collection and shipment of hazardous and radioactive materials.
The defendants in the lawsuit are ICE Service Group; the separately owned ICE Packaging, based in Tennessee; and Strategic Packaging, which in July 2017 sold certain assets to ICE Packaging.