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Alarm Monitoring Company Sues Competitor's Employees for Claiming Name Change & Merger.

SALT LAKE CITY, June 18, 2009 -- Monitronics Funding, LP (“Monitronics”), an alarm monitoring service provider with its principal place of business in Dallas, Texas has a sued a large number of a competitior's employees for falsely trading in its name.

Monitronics alleges in its complaint before the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah that a number of employees of the Pinnacle Security, LLC engaged in a scheme to steal customers away from Monitronics. This lawsuit comes on the heels of the federal lawsuit filed by Monitronics against Pinnacle Security itself, which was settled by the parties.

The scheme was uncovered in February, 2009 when Monitronics received an unusually high number of cancellation notices. When Monitronics receives a customer cancellation notice, Monitronics employees contact the customers to determine the reason for the cancellation and to try to retain them as customers.

Allegedly the employees approached Monitronics customers at home and falsely represented that Monitronics was changing its name to Pennacle Security or Monitronics and Pennacle were merging. The Monitronics customers were then asked to sign a document to continue their service, which in fact cancelled the Monitronics service and started a new relationship with Pennacle.

Named as defendants in the suit are 10 individuals designated John Does and: Krislen Akaki, Nate Barney, Mike Burch, Steven Cole, Martel Golliday, Jeff Gunn, John Hershberger, Kempton Hooper, Danuel Khaliov, Kayle Myick, Diogo Paranaiba, Rayv Patel, Jake Perkes, Josiah Pittman, Alex Sagaguchi, Bruce Shipley, Ruth Shipley, Cameron Smith, and Erik Van Woerkom.

The marks MONITRONICS and MONITRONICS INTERNATIONAL, INC. are federally registered trademarks.

The current suit contains causes of action based on trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition, federal trade libel, unfair competition, and inference with contractual relations.

When a court finds a defendant intentionally infringed a registered trademark, the court must under the Lanham Act, enter judgment for three times the greater of the infringer's profits or the plaintiff's damages together with a reasonable attorney’s fee unless the Plaintiff elects for statutory damages up to $1,000,000 per counterfeit mark per type of goods or services. These damages would be in addition any award for the other causes of action.

In the prior suit filed suit against Pinnacle for trademark infringement, unfair competition, and violations of various states’ consumer protection statutes, Monitronics obtained a preliminary injunction against Pennacle prohibiting them from using the trademark MONITRONICS.

Pennacle and Monitronics reached a settlement before proceeding to trial which stipulated: no Pinnacle agent shall hold himself or herself out in any illegal manner whatsoever, expressly or impliedly, as being associated or affiliated with Monitronics; Pennacle employees would refrain from using Monitronics or Monitronics International, Inc., registered trademarks, trade names or logos; and no Pennacle representative would represent or impy an acquisition, merger or take-over occurred between the two companies.

Monitronics is the nation's fourth-largest alarm monitoring service provider, providing service to over 500,000 residential and business customers throughout the U.S.