Carnival's Cruiseship Diamond Princess.

Cruise lines might be hurting for business at the moment, but that's not the case for their IP lawyers.

Carnival Corp. has enlisted Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to sue a contractor whom it accuses of selling its guest engagement technology to rivals such as Norwegian Cruise Line and Virgin Voyages.

Contractor DeCurtis LLC has enlisted Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Freeborn & Peters to level its own accusations that Carnival fraudulently obtained patents on the technology and unfairly tried to monopolize the market on it.

Carnival sued in the Southern District of Florida on Friday. DeCurtis sued for declaratory judgment in the Middle District two days earlier.

At issue are Carnival's Ocean Medallions, a bluetooth-enabled device the size of a quarter that can be worn in a belt or necklace or carried in a pocket. Through a network of sensors connected by 72 miles of cable, plus 4,000 digital portals supported by cloud-based data centers, a guest with an Ocean Medallion can place a food or drink order from anywhere on the ship and the Medallion will direct crew members to their location. It also provides step-by-step directions to a restaurant, lounge or another passenger, and provides touchless access to the guest's state room, among other services.

"The Ocean Platform is the result of Carnival's years of hard work and substantial investment, including efforts by hundreds of Carnival employees and scores of third-party contractors," Carnival states in its complaint. Carnival invested "hundreds of millions" on what was known internally as Project Trident, housing it in a dedicated 12,000-square-foot facility to maintain secrecy.

One of its contractors, DeCurtis, helped build out the system under a nondisclosure agreement. DeCurtis was privy to "documents describing Carnival's vision, strategy, plans (e.g., strategy presentations), experience platform models, technical design documents, and list of strategic vendors."

Carnival's CEO introduced the Ocean Platform at the 2017 CES. So far, the company has outfitted six Medallion Class ships. By the following year Norwegian had hired DeCurtis, and within months was live-testing its own wearable-based guest engagement program, Carnival alleges.

Carnival says its contract with DeCurtis provides for it to audit its work records to ensure compliance, but that DeCurtis has refused. Carnival alleges that DeCurtis has breached their contract, violated state and federal trade secret laws, and infringed three patents on its award-winning system.

DeCurtis has already sued for a declaration that it doesn't infringe Carnival's patents, that the patents are unenforceable, and that Carnival is engaging in unfair competition.

DeCurtis worked with Carnival's chief experience and innovation officer, John Padgett, at Disney to build out a similar "Magic Band" for Disney cruise ships. Padgett believed that wrist bands weren't ideal for the sometimes formal attire on cruise ships. So DeCurtis came up with the medallion idea and many of the other innovations supporting the platform. But Carnival fraudulently omitted DeCurtis' David DeCurtis from the list of named inventors on the patents, rendering them enforceable, DeCurtis says.

"Carnival has monopolized and restrained trade in the market for guest engagement systems that provide seamless engagement with cruise ship facilities through the use of wireless sensing technologies," DeCurtis' complaint alleges. It's done so by fraudulently obtaining patents from the PTO and "threatening objectively baseless litigation."

DeCurtis' team includes Quinn Emanuel Los Angeles partners Scott Watson, Justin Griffin and Patrick Schmidt, plus Freeborn & Peters Chicago partners David Gustman, Jeffery Cross, Jill Anderson and Jennifer Fitzgerald, and Jason Stearns of Freeborn's Tampa, Florida, office.

Carnival is represented by Orrick Washington, D.C., partners Diana Szego Fassbender, Steven Routh and T. Vann Pearce Jr. and Robert Uriarte of the firm's Menlo Park, California, office.