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EVANSVILLE, Illinois — fromwww.courierpress.com – Scores Inc., an Evansville company which owns a strip club and sports bar on Fulton Avenue, has filed a counter lawsuit against a similarly named national company suing it for trademark infringement.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in April by Scores Holding Co., claimed the Evansville company’s use of the Scores moniker had diluted its trademarked name and said its business reputation had been hurt by the local club’s “disreputable actions and events.”

Evansville-based Scores Inc., incorporated its name in Indiana in December 2000, according to the Indiana Secretary of State’s office.

In a response filed in District Court on Monday, Mark Warzecha, an attorney representing the Evansville company, argued the lawsuit should be dismissed because the two companies had a verbal agreement that the Evansville company would not use the Scores name for commercial purposes.

In the response, Warzecha said both companies had abided by the terms of the verbal agreement until Scores Holding filed its lawsuit. He also filed a counterclaim seeking damages from the national company.

Warzecha said in April that the name Scores is not on the Evansville club or used to market it and that the establishment is officially referred to as “Sports Bar & Gentleman’s Club.”

Scores Holding is a publicly traded company with offices in New York City. It licenses its name to clubs in New York, Baltimore, Chicago and New Orleans and for other merchandising and commercial purposes. Its Web site refers to the company’s name as “one of the most recognizable names in adult entertainment” and said the company seeks to “maximize the value of the brand through licensing the Scores name to top-tier adult nightclubs that can meet its stringent quality-of-experience criteria and financial parameters.”

According to the lawsuit, the Evansville club: “… is a downscale establishment of significantly lower quality and reputation than any of the clubs operated by Scores (Holding Company) and its licensees.”

However, citing various newspaper articles, Warzecha argued in the response the national company’s own acts have caused its reputation to be tarnished by being “… the subject of numerous suits alleging systematic sexual harassment of its employees, fraud, misrepresentation, coercion, duress, breach of contract, tax evasion and conspiracy with the New York Gambino crime family.”

Among the news reports cited were a 2010 profile of a Manhattan attorney who has filed sexual harassment lawsuits on behalf of workers from Scores and other adult nightclubs; the 2006 indictment of the company’s then-CEO and other company officials for an alleged tax evasion scheme; and a 1998 New York Times report detailing an indictment that alleged the Gambino crime family once run by John Gotti extorted more than a $1 million from Scores owners and employees through connections to two of the club’s financial backers.

The lawsuit alleges that Scores Holding Company’s reputation has been damaged by “a series of disreputable actions and events such as alleged misrepresentations to the Vanderburgh County Alcoholic Beverage Commission, shootings outside the Scores (Indiana) club, the use of underage dancers, and the occurrence of a large number of police runs and arrests of Scores (Indiana) patrons for crimes such as public intoxication, resisting arrest and fighting.”

Evansville Police Department officers made 97 runs to the Evansville club’s address at 201 B Fulton Ave. in 2010 and more than 50 as of April this year, according to the Evansville Police Department. However, department spokeswoman Officer Karen Kajmowicz said those runs could have been made for a variety of reasons, not all of which may have involved the bar or its patrons.