Opinion ID: 807545
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Pre-Suit Investigation

Text: MES competes with DeAngelo in the marine exhaust system market. Sometime prior to March 2006, other members of the industry informed MES that DeAngelo was selling exhaust systems that were believed to infringe the Woods patents. Based on these statements, on March 10, 2006, MES wrote a letter to DeAngelo requesting information on its water cooled products. DeAngelo indicated in an April 3, 2006 response that it would investigate MES’s infringement concerns and contact MES. DeAngelo never contacted MES after sending its initial April 3, 2006 letter. Over a year later one of MES’s employees photographed an allegedly infringing DeAngelo device on a vessel in West Palm Beach, FL. A year after that, Sheila Prieschl, Vice President of MES, personally inspected and photographed additional DeAngelo devices. On December 31, 2008, after reviewing these photographs, MES and Woods filed this patent infringement suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.