Kanguru Sues Imation

Kanguru has filed a lawsuit against Imation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts seeking restitution as well as to prevent Imation Corp.‘s continued use of the "Defender" trademark.

Kanguru, a division of Interactive Media Corporation, has been shipping secure USB devices with the trademarked Defender name as part of the Kanguru Defender product portfolio since January 2008. The infringing Imation Defender line has been shipping since mid-2010. In addition, Imation acquired two of Kanguru’s competitors (MXI Security and Ironkey) in 2011 and integrated the sales and product portfolios of these two companies into the Imation Defender suite.

"Kanguru formally noticed Imation of the Defender trademark violation in 2010. That notice has been ignored for nearly two years," said Don Brown, president and CEO of Kanguru. "Considering the fact that the Imation and Kanguru product sets with the Defender names are directly competitive in a global market with many overlapping distribution channels, this is an extremely damaging situation for Kanguru which must be addressed to clarify confusion in the marketplace."

Kanguru has spent substantial development and marketing funds to create the Kanguru Defender secure storage product brand.  It is a best of breed, robust security solution meeting a range of international government certifications such as Common Criteria and FIPS 140-2. Combined with the Kanguru Remote Management Console, organizations can deploy and remotely manage fleets of hardware encrypted USB flash drives and hard drives through the internet to reduce costs and meet various compliance requirements such as data breaches.  

With its lawsuit, Kanguru is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Imation from the continued use of the Imation Defender product name. Kanguru is also seeking damages for lost opportunities and irreparable damage to the Kanguru brand and confusion in the marketplace.