Spring Design launches a lawsuit against Barnes & Noble for rivaling Amazon

 Spring Design, a maker of electronic readers, is bringing a lawsuit against Barnes & Noble Inc, accusing the bookseller of illegally copying dual-screen design of newly launched Nook reader after the negotiations between two companies about a possible partnership. Spring Design is suing for damages and injunctive relief. According to Spring Design statement, Barnes & Noble used its proprietary design for better competition with Amazon.com's market-leading Kindle. At the same time the company did not disclose its intentions to make its own device. In a lawsuit filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, the accuser continued its charge saying Spring Design had shared the design of its Alex eReader with Barnes & Noble under protection of a nondisclosure agreement, intending to strike a deal to bring a device to market. According to the accusation, Barnes & Noble appreciated highly the features of the Alex eReader, but any word wasn’t said about its intention to use them until the public introduction of the company’s new Nook eReader last month. That happened when Spring Design only expected to launch its Alex reader in January. Barnes & Noble had no comments on litigation. 

Spring Design noted that it first filed patents for its Alex reader in 2006. The Nook has the same features the Alex reader does: it runs on Google Inc's Android operating system and features dual screen - is used for reading and the other for browsing.

Eric Kmiec, Spring Design's vice president of sales and marketing, said in a statement: "We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market.”

Spring Design told in its complaint that the company did a great work with book stores, publishers and newspapers over the past two years to present them “the capabilities and advantages of the interactive dual-screen navigation design." The lawsuit says that president of BarnesandNoble.com warned president of Spring Design that he would not like to partner with Amazon because of its intentions to steal Spring's unique idea. "Spring believed that it was disclosing the confidential features of its Alex device in exchange for Barnes & Noble's implicit promise that it would seriously consider acquiring Spring's product," according to the lawsuit.

Spring Design is suing for damages and injunctive relief.