A David versus Goliath story could be brewing in court, as a small company in Raleigh is suing a San Francisco analytics startup – one with a total funding haul of more than $218 million.
Tech consulting firm Brooks Bell Interactive is suing Heap Inc., a company that's been called an emerging unicorn following a $960 million valuation in 2021.
Heap did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the lawsuit, which accuses it of trademark infringement and unfair competition over its use of the brand name "Illuminate."
Brooks Bell has owned the trademark rights for the use of the “Illuminate” name in connection with website optimization software and analytic services since 2018, according to the lawsuit. The firm claims Heap was aware of its use of the word, as Heap and Brooks Bell had a business relationship dating back to 2017.
That relationship deepened in 2020, when the pair discussed a referral and partnership opportunity – and both companies made demos to present their own capabilities. Brooks Bell’s Illuminate-branded product services were part of the presentation, according to the lawsuit. A partnership was signed between the two firms at the end of 2020 to “jointly market the other’s products and services,” effective January 2021.
But when Heap started using the Illuminate brand, it created confusion, the lawsuit says, as suddenly customers started thinking Heap's products were "endorsed, sponsored, manufactured, distributed, marketed, or sold by Brooks Bell, which they are not."
Brooks Bell claims it “never authorized, permitted or licensed [Heap] to use any variation of any of the Illuminate Mark.”
Brooks Bell sent Heap a cease and desist letter in June 2022 – which was rejected by Heap. Heap, according to the lawsuit, denied its use of the mark caused confusion.
Similarly, Heap rejected another request to stop using the mark in January.
Without restraint by the court, Heap will continue to use the mark, causing “irreparable harm to Brooks Bell,” the lawsuit, filed by attorneys Devon White and Charles George of Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton, states.
Heap has not responded to the lawsuit in court and did not have an attorney listed.
Both companies continue to advertise products under the Illuminate brand.
In June 2021, Heap put out a blog post introducing “Heap Illuminate” as the “Future of Insights.” The firm described the product as a “suite of data-science driven capabilities that can scour your data to find the most important correlations, the most meaningful steps to look at, then surface those to you, automatically.”
“The goal: to make sure teams never miss anything important in their behavioral data,” the company said in a blog post at the time.
Brooks Bell, on its own website, describes its “Illuminate by Brooks Bell” as a platform where firms can centralize and share test data and insights.
Brooks Bell was founded by its namesake and current executive chairman, Brooks Bell, nearly 20 years ago in Raleigh. Its current CEO is Gregory Ng, who took on the reigns from Bell in 2019.
Bell left the day-to-day operation of the firm to advocate for earlier screenings for colon cancer – a move she made after her own diagnosis.
