Bel Air engraving company alleges copyright infringement

Two companies could be headed for a high noon showdown in U.S. District Court over copyright infringement on engraved firearm parts.

Bel Air-based Harford Engraving Service LLC has filed a lawsuit claiming Thompson Tools, its associated company, Two Point Enterprise, and owner, Dennis Matthew Thompson, are selling reproductions of its engraved firearm parts on the Internet, while falsely posing as Harford Engraving.

The complaint claims one count of false advertising, unfair competition and common law trademark infringement. The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, also seeks an injunction against Haughton, La.-based Thompson Tools to stop selling the products.

By using Harford Engravings’ Universal Product Codes and the company’s trademark, the complaint alleges that Thompson Tools is falsely representing that Harford Engravings supplied the engraved products and has “captured a substantial amount of [Harford Engraving’s] sales on Amazon.com, and in fact, has nearly captured them all.”

Harford Engraving sells its products, which range from engraved flasks to dog tags, on its website, www.harengser.com. It also sells firearm parts engraved with sayings like “Don’t Tread on Me,” “Zombie Hunter,” and “These Colors Don’t Run.”

The company also sells its wares on Amazon.com, an aspect of the business which, until recently, had been booming, said the company’s lawyer, Joshua A. Glikin of Bowie & Jensen LLC in Towson.

“What we are alleging is that this company in Louisiana has started to manufacture similar or identical-looking engravings and it’s sort of confusing the way it works on Amazon,” Glikin said. “This Louisiana company has entered its selling information on Amazon in a way that effectively markets its own knockoff engravings as the engravings produced by this Harford County company.”

Along with an injunction on Thompson Tools’ firearm parts sales, Harford Engravers is asking that all labels, signs, prints, ads and packages bearing its mark be destroyed or removed. The Maryland company is also asking to be awarded three times any profits made under its name or damages — whichever is greater.

Thompson declined to comment on the case when reached by phone Monday, but said he disagreed with the complaint and that he and his attorney would be taking action.

Amazon groups products on its page by UPC codes. When a consumer, for example, types in “ejection port cover” (a part that protects the gun’s ejection chamber from the elements) into Amazon’s search box, a page of the products comes up. The first product listed on the web page says it is made by Harford Engraving and uses the Harford Engraving UPC code.

When the consumer clicks on the product, he or she is taken to another web page where Thompson Tools is listed as the seller. The product is not actually made by Harford Engraving, and is in fact a reproduction of lower quality, Glikin said.

Amazon has struggled with this issue before and a U.S. District Court in Seattle ruled the company was not liable for a similar copyright infringement case in 2012. The website has a procedure and contact information for making complaints about copyright infringement.

The items sold by Thompson Tools are highly ranked under Amazon’s search formula and therefore appear at the top of the web page. The first three ejection port cover products that appear on Amazon’s web page (when searched at one point Monday afternoon) listed Harford Engraving as the maker, but are sold by Thompson Tools. The first ejection port cover both sold and made by Harford Engraving did not appear until the 12th product listed on the page.

Not only does a sale advantage go to a higher-ranked product on a web page, but products sold by Thompson Tools are also cheaper than those sold by Harford Engraving. For example, an ejection port cover sold by Thompson Tools was listed at $14.45 and the equivalent product sold by Harford Engraving cost $14.50.

“That wouldn’t be a profit if they bought it from Harford Engravers and decided to resell it,” Glikin said. “Our client alleges that’s not what they are doing. It’s a reproduction that it’s selling.”

Since Thompson Tools started selling these items last month, Harford Engraving’s Amazon sales have plummeted, Glikin said.

“Because the natural inclination is to choose the preferred seller or item and when the other seller is 5 cents more, why not buy from the preferred seller?” Glikin said. “We allege as a result our client gets a statement from Amazon that the sales have basically tanked.”