Automotive data provider EurotaxGlass’s has issued cease and desist notices during October to a number of customers and distributors of AuDaCon AG, an automotive information provider based in Weikersheim, Germany.

The notices contend that a significant quantity of the vehicle data used in AuDaCon products has been acquired illegitimately from EurotaxGlass’s and that AuDaCon continues use and sell this data without authorisation.

Each of the AuDaCon customers and distributors in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands identified under the proceedings has been asked to provide EurotaxGlass’s with a signed declaration that they will refrain from using the relevant data.

In 2004 EurotaxGlass’s secured injunctions against AuDaCon and its chairman Rolf Wührl, and as a result received binding legal undertakings that they would not infringe EurotaxGlass’s intellectual property rights.

EurotaxGlass’s is separately claiming significant damages from AuDaCon for alleged breach of these undertakings.

EurotaxGlass’s became concerned when AuDaCon launched, after only a few months, a product which contained a data set which would normally take years to edit. An independent expert was commissioned to evaluate the data being sold by AuDaCon and found identical discrepancies and deviations between the AuDaCon data and EurotaxGlass’s datasets.

From this it was concluded that AuDaCon must have unlawfully used EurotaxGlass’s data and deployed it in their own products.

Kevin Gaskell, CEO of EurotaxGlass’s International AG, said: 'EurotaxGlass’s business is information and data, and for us the respect of intellectual property is essential. We welcome strong competition, but only where that competition is obtaining its data fairly and honestly. Where that is not the case we will aggressively protect our rights.'