When it comes to suing seafood companies over patent infringement, Bill Kowalski’s Hawaii Seafood International is undefeated in the courtroom.

Kowalski, owner of Honolulu-based Hawaii International Seafood, Inc. (HIS), is the inventor of the "tasteless smoke" process, which treats seafood to preserve the color, texture and shelf life after the product is frozen and thawed.

He’s made millions selling his tasteless smoke seafood products to the U.S. market and forcing high-profile seafood firms, such as Hilo Fish Co., Inc. and Baltimore’s Phillips Foods, to pay large sums for infringing on his patent and ongoing royalties to continue selling tasteless smoke seafood.

HIS COO Clint Taylor confirmed to The Wave on Tuesday that litigation with additional seafood firms is ongoing. Kowalski was traveling and unavailable to comment.

“He’s suing people left and right,” complained Richard Friend, vice president of Tuna Processors, Inc. (TPI), which represents a group of overseas frozen tuna producers.

The tasteless smoke process was patented in 1999. Praised for its ability to preserve a fish’s “fresh-like” characteristics of color, taste and texture when frozen, the new category quickly turned heads among the seafood buying community, especially as it drastically reduced the costs of air freighting fresh fish.

The process of using smoke on seafood is a centuries-old one. Many firms in the seafood industry have been selling product treated with carbon monoxide -- the primary component of tasteless smoke -- for years.

Today, the list of species treated with tasteless smoke and other filtered smoke processes include tuna, marlin, swordfish, snapper, grouper, barramundi, mahi mahi and tilapia.

Kowalski’s invention is different in that it uses smoke without the seafood product tasting smoky. Nonetheless, Kowalski’s patent cites eight U.S. patent documents as references, including one called the Yamaoka patent.

The Yamaoka patent (U.S. patent no. 5,484,619), is a method for curing raw tuna meat by extra-low temperature smoking, issued almost four years before Kowalski’s patent.

HSI even bought a license to use the Yamaoka patent in its tasteless smoke process just weeks after the tasteless smoke patent was approved. Kowalski apparently knew the inventor, and Taylor said the license was purchased “out of courtesy.”

Hilo Fish, which is now licensed to sell tasteless smoke products, even said in a letter to customers, it will indemnify any of them if patent infringement is claimed under Kowalski’s or the Yamaoka patent.

“This makes us one of only a few companies in the world able to indemnify our customers against patent infringement of tasteless smoked products,” the company said on its Web site.

Problem is, Kowalski’s license to use the Yamaoka patent expired in December. Days later, the owner of the Yamaoka patent, Tuna Processors, Inc. (TPI), filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against Hawaii International Seafood for patent infringement.

TPI, which owns the rights to the Yamaoka patent, is based in Temecula, Calif. The company represents several frozen tuna producers in Southeast Asia that use the Yamaoka patent to produce frozen product for the United States.

It does not sell or import the product, but instead is “strictly involved in enforcing the Yamaoka patent,” Friend said, adding the firm also sells licenses to practice the patent and, in certain cases, takes legal action to stop others from infringing the patent.

Specifically, TPI’s lawsuit against HSI is requesting a permanent injunction against continued infringement; damages for past infringement; increased and treble damages for willful infringement ; attorneys fees; company costs related to the lawsuit; and “other relief appropriate under the circumstance,” the documents read.

“[The patents] are identical in many ways,” Friend said.

Taylor claims the Yamaoka patent uses “ultra-cold” temperatures for smoking tuna “and has nothing to do with tasteless product. It’s a different intellectual property. Theirs is cold-smoking and ours is tasteless smoke treatment.”

Friend said the lawsuit was filed in Michigan because he wasn’t about to show up on Kowalski’s “home turf” of Hawaii with a legal complaint, given HSI’s track record in Hawaii courtrooms. Hawaii International Seafood is based in Honolulu but calls Rochester, Mich., its mainland place of business.

"We’ve never lost and we settled all [lawsuits] in our favor," Taylor said.

By taking the case thousands of miles to the East, Friend is hoping for a fresh perspective.

Taylor called the move “subterfuge.”

The case is pending. Hawaii International Seafood has until March 16 to respond to the lawsuit, TPI attorney Andrew Doctoroff told The Wave on Tuesday.

Hawaii International Seafood sued for patent infringement