The president of Blue Jeans Cable fired back at Monster Cable after receiving a Cease and Desist letter ordering them to halt production of their Tartan line of cables. I'm not sure I've ever gotten goose bumps while reading a response to a legal document.
This response letter from president Kurt Denke draws a very deep and very narrow line in the sand between Blue Jeans Cable and Monster Cable. He is almost daring the litigation happy Monster Cable lawyers to cross the line and bring on a fight to the bloody finish court battle."It may be that my inability to see the pragmatic value of settling frivolous claims is a deep character flaw, and I am sure a few of the insurance carriers for whom I have done work have seen it that way; but it is how I have done business for the last quarter-century and you are not going to change my mind. If you sue me, the case will go to judgment, and I will hold the court's attention upon the merits of your claims--or, to speak more precisely, the absence of merit from your claims--from start to finish. Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it."
"I assume that Monster Cable International, Ltd., in Bermuda, listed on these patents, is an IP holding company and that Monster Cable's principal US entity pays licensing fees to the Bermuda corporation in order to shift income out of the United States and thereby avoid paying United States federal income tax on those portions of its income; my request for these licensing agreements is specifically intended to include any licensing agreements, including those with closely related or sham entities, within or without the Monster Cable "family," and without regard to whether those licensing agreements are sham transactions for tax shelter purposes only or whether they are bona fide arm's-length transactions."
I'm going to try to follow this story to see how it ends. We'll see if this ends up as a full blown courtroom drama, or if it whithers and dies in some back room or phone call.
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