A court battle centered around the “Wallet Ninja” has resulted in one New York-based supplier owing another more than $3.3 million.

In September, a federal jury found that Syosset, NY-headquartered WOWLine (asi/98360) willfully infringed on the design patent that Dynamite Marketing (asi/51190) holds for the Wallet Ninja, described as a brandable 18-in-1 multipurpose pocket tool.

The jury awarded $1.85 million in compensatory damages. WOWLine challenged the verdict, seeking to have it tossed and a new trial granted.

In a Dec. 1 decision, U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown denied WOWLine’s challenge, upheld the verdict, and ruled that WOWLine owed Dynamite Marketing an additional $1.53 million in attorneys’ fees, expert fees and costs related to the case.

Brown called WOWLine attorneys’ post-trial motion a “sweeping attack on the verdict unconstrained by the law, evidence, common sense or the truth.”

In his decision, Brown noted that Dynamite Marketing’s Wallet Ninja “enjoyed remarkable market success, being distributed through major retailers and obtaining significant rankings on Amazon.com.” He said evidence showed that WOWLine “sought to offer a product that precisely mimicked the patented features of the Wallet Ninja.”

After being confronted with “irrefutable information” that it was infringing on Dynamite Marketing’s patent with its multifunction pocket tool product, WOWLine continued to sell through its inventory of infringing goods, ultimately moving about 800,000 units, Brown said.

“The jury’s finding of willful infringement was based on substantial evidence of a pattern of bad conduct on the part of defendants,” the judge wrote, asserting that WOWLine even undertook a “faux redesign process that yielded a product described by their own expert as a ‘direct knockoff’ and a ‘direct cloning.’”

Brown also ruled that WOWLine is subject to a permanent injunction that binds the company from infringing on the Wallet Ninja patent.

ASI Media has contacted WOWLine for comment but has not heard back as of this writing.

The case, first filed in 2019, played out in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The Wallet Ninja’s 18 functions include bottle opener, can opener, four screwdrivers and ruler.