Avasoft sued by One-Shot.

Avasoft, which has been aggressively expanding marketing and distribution of its soft-serve equipment system over the past year, is the subject of a lawsuit by McGill Technology Limited, parent company of another soft-serve equipment marketer, The One-Shot Corporation Limited. The suit charges Avasoft with patent infringement for "directly infringed, contributory infringed and/or induced the infringement of said Letters Patent No. 6,182,862 by making, using, selling and offering to sell their Avasoft frozen product dispensers."

The infringement lawsuit was issued on November 7, 2007 (case number 2:2007cv14783) and served one week later upon Avasoft, Inc. at their Nevada facility on November 12, 2007. McGill Technology Limited has requested jury trial in Federal Court (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan) with presiding Judge Julian Abele Cook.

The One-Shot Corporation is described as "a successful international intellectual property solutions provider for dispensing soft serve frozen desserts. The suit notes that "The One-Shot dispensing concept is possibly the original single ice cream cartridge system in the world with thousands of machines sold globally, along with millions of portions consumed annually. It is a patented means of dispensing a soft serve type swirl format from hygienic packaging."

It is not clear what prompted the lawsuit at this particular time. OneShot has been on the market since at least 2002 and the Avasoft dispenser has also been on the market for at least that long, with patent applications that date back into the late 1990s.

One possible reason is the recent acquisition of Ezee Whip, the UK distributor of the Avasoft model, by Avasoft. It may be possible that the new trans-Atlantic entity created by the acquisition provides a greater threat to One-Shot.