TRA has patent and trade secrets claims dismissed in Kantar court row

However, the two-year-old case will continue as Judge Shira Scheindlin did not dismiss TRA’s non-patent claims, including breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. A court conference is scheduled for next week.

The dispute between the two companies dates to June 2011, when Kantar filed a complaint as a pre-emptive strike against TRA, whose CEO had threaten to take the company to court over alleged patent infringement.

TRA followed up Kantar’s action several weeks later with a counter-claim, accusing Kantar – whose parent company WPP was an investor in TRA – of taking advantage of information TRA had shared as part of discussions of a “strategic relationship or acquisition” in order to launch a competing research product.

Both Kantar’s RapidView product and TRA’s own Media TRAnalytics tool combine TV viewing information with purchase data with a view to better targeting ad spend.

TRA has since been acquired by Tivo.