| MATERIAL EXPRESS
CORPORATION
2235 Encinitas Blvd.
Encinitas, CA 92024
www.materialexpress.com
For Further Information, contact:
Barry
Mester at bmester@materialexpress.com
or 800-594-7044
FEDERAL COURT JUDGE RULES THAT MATERIAL
EXPRESS MAY USE NEW, IMPROVED, APEX PRICE UPDATING FORMAT
Encinitas, CA - August 16, 2002 (www.materialexpress.com)
In a copyright action currently pending in Federal Court, San Diego, Federal
Chief Judge Marilyn Huff ruled today that Material Express, a defendant in the
case and a leading vendor of price and product information for the electrical
distribution community, may continue to offer its innovative price updating
service, APeX* (Advanced Pricing electronic eXchange), in its recently improved
record layout.
The ruling came in response to a request from the plaintiff i2 Technologies (dba
Trade Service) for a preliminary injunction barring Material Express from
selling its APeX service in competition with plaintiff's PFMS service. Trade
Service had alleged that copyright law protected their "record layout". In
response, Material Express has alleged that Trade Service's PFMS service enjoys
an unfair monopoly in the industry.
The recent APeX format contains a number of differences over the "legacy"
formats of PFMS. In issuing her ruling on plaintiff's request for a
preliminary injunction Judge Huff wrote in her opinion, in part: "After all, a
competitor is entitled to use a different layout that utilizes previously unused
fields or changes the use of existing fields…..the new APeX layouts…..are merely
expressions independent and different from the one copyrighted in PFMS."
Material Express reports that their new APeX format is fully compatible with all
leading electrical distributor software packages and that they are working with
all software vendors to modify their programs to take full advantage of the
added information in APeX. According to Barry Mester, President and CEO of
Material Express, "We are working hard to improve our service by including
important data that is lacking in competitive services. These are now included
in our APeX service, and will benefit all customers as the software vendors
issue software updates to take full advantage of this important information."
While Judge Huff ruled, in part, that Material Express could not use an exact
copy of the PFMS format, she also ordered that Trade Service post a bond in the
amount of $500,000 to be considered as "damages" to Material Express should
Trade Service fail in their copyright case.
Earl B. Beutler, co-founder and Chairman of Material Express, states "We feel
Judge Huff's ruling is a victory for the right of electrical distributors to
choose their price updating service, and, of course for Material Express. We
are proud of our accomplishments in protecting your right of choice against i2
Technologies' attempts to achieve in the courtroom what they have been unable to
achieve in the marketplace. We will continue to fight to protect your right to
choose".
For
Further Information, contact:
Barry
Mester at bmester@materialexpress.com
or 800-594-7044
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