HOUSTON (CN) - An oilfield equipment firm claims in court that a competitor destroyed it with bogus copyright charges that corrupt Mexican officials enforced by shutting its factory down and jailing its owner for five months.
Campeche, Mexico-based Iner Servicios and its owners Ivette Aguirre-Mendez and Jose Farrera-Redondo sued Submar Inc. of Houma, La., its Mexican affiliate Submarelher, its president, its owner and its attorney, in Federal Court.
Iner Servicios says that before its factory was shut down its primary business was manufacturing concrete mud mats.
"Mud mats are blanket-like concrete structures consisting of 160 concrete elements interconnected by polypropylene rope," the complaint states. "They are designed to be flexible so that they can be used to cover an uneven surface, such as a pipeline or uneven shoreline.
"Concrete mud mats are often used in the petroleum industry as a foundation for ocean drilling rigs and as a protective covering and stabilizer for underwater pipelines.
"Mud mats are also used in shoreline erosion-prevention and other construction and industrial applications in a wide variety of settings."
By 2010, Iner Servicios says, it was the larger provider of flexible concrete mats in Mexico for offshore pipelines, and also had a successful personnel staffing operation for the oil and gas industry.
"Most of Iner Servicios' customers for mud mats were contractors working for the Mexican national oil company Pemex under contracts awarded pursuant to a public bidding process," the complaint states.
Iner Servicios says that while its business prospered, its competitor Submarelher, a partnership between the U.S. concrete fabricating company Submar and the Mexican conglomerate Elher Group, was unsuccessful in its efforts to obtain contracts through the public bidding process.
Iner Servicios claims Submar et al. tried to assert patent rights in concrete mud mats by suing another competitor, Grupo Corporativo.
"The case was based on an intentional mistranslation of a United States patent issued to Submar," the complaint states.
"Although the patent actually covered only a non-abrasive pad attached to concrete mud mats for certain applications, Submarelher, Submar or another of the defendants fraudulently altered the language in translation in order to claim a patent on the entire mud mat design.
"A Mexican court rejected this ploy, found that the alleged patent rights did not exist, and dismissed the case.
"After failing to eliminate the competition with false patents Submarelher, Submar, and their co-conspirators turned to artistic copyrights.
"This strategy was fraudulent on its face because Mexican copyright law does not protect industrial or commercial designs, areas that are instead the domain of patents.
"Nevertheless, beginning in 2008, Submar and Submarelher obtained several Mexican copyright registrations for concrete mud mat designs."
Iner Servicios says two of the sham copyrights were obtained in the name of Submarelher owner Francisco Elizarraras Wignall, and a third was obtained by Thomas Angel, president of Submar.
"These copyright registrations are blatant shams. Mexican copyright
law protects original works of artistic creativity," the complaint states. "By their own terms, the copyright certificates issued to Wignall and Angel do not apply to industrial or commercial use of the ideas contained in the work. ...
"Of course, industrial and commercial uses are the only uses of mud mats genuinely at issue between these parties.