Batesville wins patent infringement case

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Earlier this week Funeral Director Daily learned from this press release from Batesville that “the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana awarded summary judgment in favor of Batesville Casket Company, LLC and Batesville Services, LLC and against Vandor Group, Inc., rejecting Vandor’s claims that Batesville’s cardboard rental insert, which the company launched in 2011, infringed four of Vandor’s patents.” 

The press release went on to say “Batesville vigorously disputed Vandor’s allegations of patent infringement and filed its own counterclaims requesting a declaration from the Court that Vandor’s patents were invalid. In its summary judgment decision, the Court agreed with Batesville that all four patents asserted by Vandor were invalid and dismissed Vandor’s infringement claims against Batesville in their entirety. Batesville’s motion for attorney’s fees is now pending before the Court.”

Batesville’s Senior Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer Jenn Parvin made the following comment in a prepared statement in the press release, “The Court’s ruling allows us to put these accusations behind us and continue designing and delivering the high-quality products that funeral professionals need and that families deserve.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  When I served on the Board of Regents for the University of Minnesota one of the most fascinating aspects for me was serving on the University’s Litigation Committee.  I served on that committee for my entire six year term and for a short period of time served as Chairman when that position was temporarily vacant.

While a lot of the legal issues for the University were in the realm of employment law or patient medical issues as a research university we had our share of disputes over patents as well.  I found them fascinating and was involved in the  University strategies for many cases.  One thing I learned about patent disputes are that they take a long period of time to resolve and if you are not well-funded many companies can just wait you out.

Just for perspective, as a major public research university with a large scope of research in our mission, during my time at the University of Minnesota our researchers were applying for one patent every three days . . .so there was ample opportunity for disagreement.  Somewhat under the radar, most observers don’t know that the University of Minnesota ranks 12th nationally with expenditures of about $1.32 billion in our budget for research annually.

When I first was put on the committee I had a discussion about it with then U of M President Eric Kaler.  I remember him telling me, “Companies don’t like litigating issues with us because if needed we have the financial resources of the entire state of Minnesota behind us and we can play the long-game.”   I never wanted to pursue cases that I felt didn’t have merit for the University of Minnesota, but for those cases that we felt had merit the thought of President Kaler’s comments to me always gave me the point of view that if we felt we were right, we could wait out the eventual outcome.

As to the length of these patent disputes I cannot comment on many that are still ongoing, but there some in the public realm that I worked on.  For instance, here’s an article on one such dispute that was started in 2014 and continues, to my knowledge, unresolved to this day — the case being over a decade old at this time.

I’m guessing that Batesville is glad that their litigation on these patents is over and probably very happy that they prevailed with their side of the argument.  They can now continue to concentrate their efforts on providing products that funeral providers can use to enhance their service.

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