iMatcher Inc. obtains restraining order against company founded by ex-employees

Lawsuit alleges sabotage, theft of proprietary software, customer lists

EAST NORTHPORT, NY – iMatcher Inc., the nation’s leading provider of permission-based email address appending technology, has been granted a court order preventing a competitor founded by former iMatcher employees from using its proprietary technology.

In a lawsuit filed in Suffolk County (Long Island, N.Y.) Supreme Court, iMatcher alleges that two former employees deliberately disabled iMatcher’s software system and used the company’s proprietary software and customer lists to launch their own competing company. On June 13, Supreme Court Judge Donald R. Blydenburgh granted a restraining order against the employees and their company, IQ Point Marketing Corp. of Hauppauge, N.Y. iMatcher Inc. is based in East Northport, N.Y.

“This is a blatant case of industrial sabotage and theft of trade secrets,” said iMatcher founder and president Paul White. “We will prove in court that this competitor stole and used our technology, as well as our customer lists, and we will not rest until they are out of business. These events forced us to accelerate ongoing research and development efforts and we now have even more sophisticated email appending technology, which helped us minimize the effects of the sabotage.”

iMatcher is a unique technology, developed by White, that appends e-mail addresses to existing consumer and business mailing lists. It only provides email addresses of those who have given permission to receive the mailings, providing customers with high-quality names that produce superior results at a fraction of the cost of direct-mail marketing pieces.

The exclusive iMatcher technology produces an email append rate of 20 to 30 percent on consumer postal lists and as high as 80 percent on business postal lists. iMatcher matches customer-supplied lists against a constantly updated listing of more than 100 million double opt-in, third-party permission email addresses contained in more than 30 databases.

The lawsuit alleges that former iMatcher employees Karoly “Rafael” Kis and Jeff White (no relation to the company founder) started their own company, IQ Point Marketing, prior to January while still employed by iMatcherä. Though both resigned from iMatcher in January, Kis remained a part-time contract employee of iMatcher providing software programming services.

Kis had been employed at iMatcher since August 1999 and was responsible for computer programming and other technology tasks. Jeff White was hired in January 2000 to market the iMatcher email address appending services. On April 1, the lawsuit contends, iMatcher’s software system ceased functioning as a result of Kis programming a “poison pill” computer virus in the software.

In a related proceeding, iMatcher has filed a lawsuit against two Long Island, N.Y.-based Internet companies and their owners, contending they deliberately failed to provide contracted computer hardware services. The lawsuit was filed against Lawrence Montheard and Robert Mellman, and their businesses, Whyldweb Productions Inc. and Applied Business Solutions Network of Huntington, N.Y. IQ Point Marketing is a wholly owned subsidiary of Whyldweb Productions.

“We can show that these are not mere coincidences, but a calculated effort to cripple our business,” White said. “However, this effort has failed and we continue to provide unparalleled service and results for our clients.”

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