Following article is from The Daily Record, a Maryland newspaper, for Oct. 19, 2009.
Model train maker Mike's Train House sues longtime rival
BRENDAN KEARNEY
Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer
October 19, 2009
A Columbia (,MD) model train manufacturer has filed the latest in a series of patent infringement lawsuits aimed at a longtime competitor, alleging he and his company made unauthorized use of technology that syncs a locomotive’s sound and smoke to its speed on the tracks.
Mike’s Train House Inc. claims Robert Grubba has a history of stealing such prized intellectual property in their niche industry. In its most recent suit filed Oct. 8, MTH alleges that the company where Grubba is now president, Broadway Limited Imports, stole the patented microprocessing technology that synchronizes puffing smoke with the “chuffing” of the engine in a particular model of train, the HO-gauge. MTH claims it first developed the technology in 2000, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
“That’s the problem,” said Mike Wolf, a model train enthusiast since childhood who founded the company that bears his name in 1980.
Wolf discovered the infringement when he recently purchased one of the locomotives in Florida-based BLI’s new line, whose five models range from $350 to $500, to have an engineer look at its syncing system.
“I think it’s going to be pretty clean cut,” said Wolf, 49, in an interview Monday. “I think [Grubba] knows he’s doing it and he can try to cover it up, but it is what it is. He can’t be using my intellectual property with no regard.”
Wolf’s suit asks for declaratory and injunctive relief relating to its two patents, issued in 2002 and 2003, as well as compensatory damages and attorney’s fees.
Wolf’s lawyer William E. Erskine, who also tinkered with trains as a kid, said the disputed technology lends authenticity to the models and thus augments their value in the marketplace.
Grubba did not return calls for comment Monday, but in an August interview with the Daytona Beach News Journal about BLI’s new facility in Ormond Beach, Fl., he said, “We do all the product design, research and development, electronics design, sound recordings — all the trains have recorded sounds of the real train.”
Grubba, like Wolf, has had a lifelong interest in model trains, according to that newspaper interview. But their shared interest has led to repeat legal battles and bad blood.
“He’s not a good guy, in my opinion,” said Wolf of Grubba.
Grubba was previously chief engineer at Lionel Trains, perhaps the most famous name in the industry. MTH sued Lionel in a Detroit federal court in 2000, won at trial and later settled. MTH alleges in its most recent complaint that Grubba, while at Lionel, “organized and participated in a scheme to steal over 3,000 of MTH’s secret blueprints for designing more than 20 separate model trains.”
After Grubba left Lionel to become chief engineer for K-Line Electric Trains Inc., Lionel sued in federal court in Manhattan in 2005, claiming Grubba had conspired to steal Lionel’s trade secrets, one of which involved realistic sound effects for model trains. That case settled on terms favorable to Lionel, according to MTH’s suit this month.
Grubba started BLI in 2002, and the company “continues to lead the model railroading world with cutting-edge electronics, synchronous smoke and the most realistic and powerful sound available,” according to the company’s Web site.
But Mike’s Train House has a markedly different view of its competitor’s business.
“A recent brochure of defendants states that its products are ‘so affordable because we have been able to reduce our costs significantly by producing our own proprietary sound system, thereby eliminating product licensing fees,’” according to MTH’s suit. “While it is untrue that defendants have ‘produced their own sound system,’ they have indeed sought to ‘eliminate product licensing fees’ by infringing MTH’s patents.”