Expo Group Fires Another Warning Shot on Patent

By Gary Tufel -- Tradeshow Week, 5/3/2004

The Expo Group has expanded its controversial patent on a service that other general contractors claim has been widely offered for years, provoking a response from The Freeman Companies and GES Exposition Services.

In late April, TEG announced that the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office had issued a continuation of its patent on the Single Source business process and software technology. TEG's original patent, issued in April 2003, enabled it to license the process to users. The continuation expands on and refines claims made in the original in order to more broadly cover uses of the patented product.

For instance, the supply chain management functionality now carries greater protection with a claim related to the number of suppliers within a service, such as telecommunications, that the software can process.

Immediately following TEG's announcement, Freeman and GES issued a joint statement. "As we stated last year when the original patent was issued, we continue to be concerned that our mutual customers, both exhibitors and show managers, will be confused by the PR efforts of The Expo Group regarding this patent," said Joseph V. Popolo Jr., president and CEO of Freeman, in the statement. "Although we provide a different service model, which generally eliminates the markups of a billing service, we have always provided a 'Total Show' service, and do not see the patent affecting us."

Paul Dykstra, president and CEO of GES, added that his company was investigating the claims made in TEG's new patent, but did not anticipate that it would prevent GES from continuing to provide service to its customers.

According to Howe & Hutton Senior Partner Jonathan Howe, an attorney who specializes in travel, tourism, hotel and meetings liability, the continuation patent doesn't necessarily mean TEG's product has been enhanced. It is merely a request to widen the original patent's scope. In Howe's view, the extension is a warning to other contractors that the issue is still alive, and allows TEG to sell licenses to them and demand back royalties from pre-patent users.

Corbin Ball, who specializes in tradeshow-industry technology, added that TEG's product has a narrow scope, meaning it won't have a huge impact on most people in the industry. However, he added, "If I were GES and Freeman, I'd be freaking out. They've been offering similar services for years. GES has had online exhibitor kits since 1996."

TEG called the continuation patent "comparable to a child of the original, or parent, patent application, covering additional scope of the process."

TEG President and CEO Ray Pekowski said the continuation patent application was submitted before the original patent was challenged in the press by other contractors. "However," he added, "we did inform the patent office of our competitors' statements by sending them news articles appearing in the industry magazines. The fact that the patent office considered these statements and allowed the continuation patent in light of these allegations demonstrates the strength and validity of the patent."