Though it doesn’t have that much to do with e-books, the most recent development in the Borders bankruptcy has a lot to do with electronic data of another form. Borders has filed suit against Next Jump, the company that manages its customer rewards program. Borders is accusing Next Jump of essentially stealing its intellectual property in the form of an e-mailing list of a half million customers, in that Next Jump is sending emails to Borders customers directing them to another Next Jump website, OO.com.
In an email statement to paidContent, Next Jump denied it had done anything wrong. “Borders has been a long-time client. They went bankrupt. We had an agreement with Borders management to move accounts to OO.com to allow Borders members continued access to their earned points,” wrote Executive Vice President Meghan Messenger. “It is now in the courts and we feel we are in the right.”
This could be especially important for the ailing chain as that mailing list and Borders’s trademark are among the most valuable assets the company has left, and bidders are already raising concern over the issue and considering lowering their bids.
I wondered why I suddenly started getting emails from oo.com. I just marked them as spam, I really have no interest in the daily deal kind of thing.
I never got an email from Next Jump. Excellent!
I signed up for Borders spam, not someone else’s. There better be a way to opt-out of this that doesn’t require a notarized, certified letter from my lawyer.
They should just settle the issue and take care of their customers. The way I see it Borders Customers are Next Jumps customers also since they handle the reward programs