A Dallas textile engineer who owns 10 patents related to the manufacturing of high-thread-count sheets has been fighting a yearslong battle in courtrooms across the country against other manufacturers that he alleged were either infringing his patents or lying about the thread count of their products.
Recently, Dallas attorney Cory Johnson, of counsel with Winstead, secured another victory for Arun Agarwal and his company AAVN when a federal judge in North Carolina on March 28 dismissed competitor Globe Cotyarn’s lawsuit seeking to invalidate all 10 of AAVN’s patents.
“It’s a really important patent, all 10 of them,” Johnson recently told The Lawbook. “Because they are essentially the only ones that describe a method for creating high-thread-count cotton and cotton-polyester blend sheets.”
Agarwal’s fight began before Johnson got involved, back in 2015, when the company decided to file a half-dozen lawsuits alleging competitors had infringed the patents.
“What was ultimately determined when the alleged infringing products were tested is that they weren’t actually practicing the patent,” Johnson said, describing the contentious litigation that took place in the Southern District of New York and before the International Trade Commission. “They were simply lying about, or misrepresenting, the characteristics of their product.”
It turns out those types of misrepresentations in the high-thread-count sheet industry are not uncommon. On March 24, the department store chain Macy’s Retail Holdings and Macy’s West Stores reached a settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by Sara Hawes and other consumers who alleged they were duped into buying lower-quality sheets than what packaging advertised.
Macy’s has agreed to pay $10.5 million to bring an end to the litigation.
Finding out the identity of the manufacturer of sheets with misrepresented thread counts can be difficult, Johnson said, noting that the information is not discernible using publicly available customs records.
“There’s information that may allow you to guess at who the manufacturer is, but that’s the real difficulty in this litigation,” he said.
So, AAVN has taken a different approach.
“AAVN has made its mission to identify misrepresenting cotton-polyester blend sheets to retailers and bring it to the retailer’s attention and say ‘Hey, this is a fraud on consumers and it puts you in jeopardy,’” he said. “The whole point of AAVN’s actions are to protect consumers and protect innocent retailers.”
Attorneys for Globe Cotyarn did not respond to a message seeking comment.
AAVN and Agarwal are also represented by Richard A. Coughlin, Kimberly B. Gatling and Kip D. Nelson of Fox Rothschild.
Globe Cotyarn is represented by Andrew S. Chamberlin and Dixie T. Wells of Ellis & Winters and James L. Lester of MacCord Mason.
The case number is 1:22-cv-00079.