Hapag-Lloyd is the second liner operator to be hit with a patent infringement lawsuit over its container tracking system.
Transcend Shipping Systems filed a suit on Tuesday, accusing the German shipowner of infringing five patents related to its Hapag-Lloyd LIVE system that customers can use to follow their shipments and monitor the conditions inside a container.
It is similar to the lawsuit Transcend filed against Maersk earlier this month.
"Although the systems and methods claimed in the Transcend patents are ubiquitous now [and, as a result, are widely infringed], the specific combinations of elements, as recited in the claims, was not conventional or routine at the time of the invention," the complaint, filed in the US federal court for the Western District of Texas, read.
Transcend is registered in Florida, but based in Yonkers, New York, and backed by businessman and attorney Raymond Joao.
The patents, the first of which was published in 2002, describe a system where a container's location and conditions can be tracked by a global positioning system and memory device mounted on the container. One describes a system for sending alerts when an event occurs or when information is requested from the container.
The lawsuit names Hapag-Lloyd and its US subsidiary as defendants. It seeks treble damages as allowed under federal law.
Hapag-Lloyd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Financial cases
Prior to his lawsuits against boxship owners, Joao, though Joao Bock Transaction Systems, spent nearly 15 years litigating against financial firms over patents related to online banking.
His targets included small community banks, credit card providers such as Capital One and Mastercard, brokerages and financial software providers.
Some chose to settle while others fought, with several courts ruling against Joao.
Patents are assumed to be valid once issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office but their validity can be challenged in courts. For something to be patentable, it must be new, non-obvious and a concrete idea.
So-called "patent trolling", or non-practising patent owners filing lawsuits against companies offering products in order to induce settlements, became an issue in the last decade before court rulings and new federal laws narrowed the rights of patent holders.
In one of the legal disputes, electronic payment services provider Online Resources Corp described Joao as a "patent troll" in a dispute over a lawsuit against one of its subsidiaries that it said violated a previous settlement agreement.
