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The photographs show comparable views of a Kodi 20-quart cooler, left, and a nICE G2 20-quart cooler.

The photographs show comparable views of a Kodi 20-quart cooler, left, and a Home Depot Everbilt 26-quart cooler.

The photographs show comparable views of a Kodi 20-quart cooler, left, and a Kuer 20-quart cooler.

H-E-B wants to put some cooler makers and sellers permanently on ice.

The San Antonio grocery chain alleges in a recent lawsuit that the companies — including Home Depot — are infringing on patents for its Kodi cooler.

H-E-B seeks court orders recalling the alleged infringing coolers and directing the destruction of the containers as well as the plates and molds used to make them and all related advertising materials.

If it prevails, the grocer also wants any financial damages it may receive tripled. It didn’t specify how much it’s seeking.

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So what coolers have H-E-B losing its cool? nICE and Kuer coolers, as well as Home Depot’s Everbilt coolers.

“At H-E-B, we invest heavily in innovation across our company to provide our customers the best quality products and customer experience available,” spokeswoman Dya Campos said in an email Tuesday. “As a result, we cannot be idle spectators while others use without permission the intellectual property H-E-B and its partners have worked so hard to develop.

“While we would prefer to not go to court, H-E-B will vigorously fight to protect our investments and brand,” she added.

H-E-B filed its lawsuit Friday in federal court in Waco, which increasingly is becoming a popular venue for patent-infringement lawsuits.

The defendants have not filed answers to the lawsuit yet. A Home Depot spokeswoman said it received the lawsuit Monday and was reviewing it, but had no comment on the claims. The other companies didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Besides Atlanta-based Home Depot, the other defendants include Georgia’s Southern Sales & Marketing Group Inc. and subsidiary nICE Coolers, and China’s Ningbo Kuer Plastic Technology Co. Ltd. and two affiliated companies that are behind the Kuer coolers.

At the crux of H-E-B’s complaint is a patented pressure-release button on the exterior of its Kodi coolers. Depressing the button releases pressure inside the Kodi and makes its easier to open the lid.

Everbilt, nICE and Kuer coolers have utilized a pressure-release button, H-E-B says in its suit, adding they infringe on four patents it holds.

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The lawsuit says that Brett Ramsey, H-E-B’s senior buyer for grills and coolers, began exploring better cooler technology after a “frustrating” experience with his brother-in-law’s cooler while on his boat.

That led H-E-B to two Kentucky inventors who had created “improved cooler technology.” Eric Wooldridge and Daniel Bailey had filed an application to patent the technology in 2012.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website offers a description of the vacuum cooler the inventors devised.

“This system includes a cooler housing, a reinforced lid, a radiation reflective material application, and a system to remove air from the containment area, thus creating a vacuum within the cooler itself and sealing the lid to the cooler housing,” it states. “Upon actuation of a vacuum release device, air is reintroduced into the containment area thus allowing the lid to be removed and the stored products be accessed.”

In 2015, H-E-B acquired rights to the patent application for an undisclosed amount. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to H-E-B the following year.

H-E-B subsequently received four more patents that “claim various embodiments of a pressure release system for a vacuum cooler and improve the usability of the cooler,” the lawsuit says.

H-E-B operates a 81,000-square-foot “innovation laboratory” in Austin where it develops “next generation grocery technology,” it says.

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The grocer spends about $300,000 a year marketing the Kodi brand through various media, H-E-B says. It featured Ramsey in a commercial promoting the Kodi coolers.

“While the Kodi coolers come in a number of body colors, the button is consistently presented in H-E-B red to reference the trademarked H-E-B logo,” the complaint adds. The button is surrounded by a “black rosette.”

On the nICE cooler, the button is red and left of center on the front. H-E-B says that and other features make the nICE “virtually indistinguishable” from the Kodi.

H-E-B says it sent a letter to Southern Sales in 2018 demanding that it “cease and desist” selling the infringing niCE coolers, which are sold at Home Depot. They’ve continued with their “infringing activities,” H-E-B says.

H-E-B sent a similar letter to one of the Kuer companies. The Kuer company modified and then took down its website, H-E-B says. The suit adds that Kuer makes Home Depot’s Everbilt coolers.

Patrick Danner is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering banking and civil courts. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | pdanner@express-news.net | Twitter: @AlamoPD

Patrick Danner is a business reporter for the San Antonio Express-News.