As was previously reported, DealMaker has filed a lawsuit against Issuance and its founder Darren Marble claiming the Issuance platform is “predicated on and copied from DealMaker’s own platform.”
In a comment sent to CI, Marble said “the claims in this lawsuit are entirely without merit. We look forward to our day in court and winning.”
In a public statement from last week, DealMaker provided an update on the case in California courts:
“On June 27, 2023, the United States District Court for the Central District of California issued an Order confirming that DealMaker’s case against Darren Marble, Issuance Inc. and Crush Capital Inc. will proceed. The Court denied the Defendants’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit because DealMaker’s trade secrets claims are sufficiently pleaded in the complaint. DealMaker alleges that the Defendants gained access to DealMaker’s platform under false pretenses and subsequently misappropriated DealMaker’s intellectual property and trade secrets.
Last week, DealMaker also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction asking the Court to prevent the Defendants from making false statements about DealMaker.”
CI reached out to DealMaker for additional information on the case and a representative of the firm said they have many long term partners claiming that in this case their rights were violated.
“This doesn’t deter us from continuing to explore top-tier partnerships as a critical building block for this growing industry. So no, we aren’t changing our partner approach. DealMaker will always actively and vigilantly protect our Intellectual Property and Confidential Information. Issuance’s motion to dismiss failed and DealMaker looks forward to pursuing the matter through to trial.”
DealMaker said the ruling allows the company to amend several claims to “distinguish them from the trade secret allegations.”
“The June 27th decision is a leave to amend ancillary claims, but the centerpiece of DealMaker’s complaint against Issuance is our trade secret claim which is 100% upheld by the Court. 100% of the core damages that DealMaker is seeking remain intact. All claims against Crush Capital remain intact as well. Any attempts to mischaracterize the actual ruling by the Court as “dismissed” are consistent with a tendency to misrepresent the truth.”
While it is difficult to predict any outcome in a case like this you can anticipate many months of legal jousting and, perhaps, an actual trial. Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, a settlement of some kind could emerge.