Marketing companies are always on the lookout for new places to blitz consumers with messages. Now that search has brought two companies into conflict over a space that doesn’t even exist yet: the inside of self-driving cars.

Mach 18 Design Inc., a small Fairfax district marketing and branding company, had managed to keep its in-car entertainment system for autonomous vehicles under wraps until earlier this month, when a fight boiled over with a prospective contractor.

Mach 18, founded by entertainment marketing veteran Michael Ameen, said that it had brought in Berlin marketing firm IconMobile to participate in the development of a prototype system. Rather than working on its project, Mach 18 claims, IconMobile stole proprietary information and set about developing a competing project through its Santa Monica office.

Details of Mach 18’s project remain scarce, but it appears to focus on delivering branded content and marketing messages to the captive occupant in a self-driving car, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

“Freed from the need for an attentive driver, the car interior can become a fundamentally different space: media center, conversation area, office, Zen retreat,” the complaint states. “The companies that provide new devices and services that become standard equipment on self-driving cars stand to become the dominant players in the field for decades to come.”

The two companies are fighting over territory that is still far from reality. Self-driving cars, which rely on GPS and lidar, a remote sensing technology using lasers, to navigate roads without human input, are years away from mass availability. Google Inc., which is developing software for self-driving cars, expects to release its technology by 2018. Car manufacturers Nissan and Daimler AG have stated that they expect to sell fully self-driving cars in 2020. Legal and regulatory hurdles could present further obstacles.

Nevertheless, Mach 18 is forging ahead, and alleging that IconMobile, a former potential partner, is developing a nearly identical product.

“There’s no audience right now,” said Derrick Daye, managing partner at strategic brand consultancy Blake Project in Los Angeles. “This is about marketers uncovering yet another place where they can introduce their message to you. That’s the thing that never ends. They’re always looking for ways and places to get in your mind.”

New idea

Mach 18, founded in 2000, has worked at the intersection of technology and entertainment, developing websites for musicians including the Bee Gees and TV shows such as “The Shield.”

The company declined to comment, but according to the lawsuit it filed against IconMobile earlier this month, it began working late last year on its self-driving car project, dubbed “Arive.” Development of the in-car system would focus more on user interface and content than hardware, potentially packaging pre-existing technology to listen to music, watch movies or do work while in the car.

“The critical question is what it will actually look like. The answer to that question – the successful answer – will require a winning combination of user interface design, functionality and content offerings (rather than any fundamentally new hardware). And it is potentially worth a great deal of money,” the company said in court papers.

Mach 18 claims it approached the Santa Monica office of IconMobile, a mobile marketing company that makes apps and mobile websites for corporate clients, to solicit a bid for development of a prototype. IconMobile’s recent projects include an app, the Isis Mobile Wallet, which allows consumers to pay for purchases using their smartphones. It also has several clients in the automobile industry, having worked on an ad campaign for the Ford Taurus and a mobile website for Land Rover.

Mach 18 claims that IconMobile provided a preliminary quote of $350,000 for its work and signed a nondisclosure agreement that includes prohibitions against revealing “strategies for marketing/distribution of branded media/content/commerce over next class In-Vehicle Infotainment Platforms.”

However, Mach 18 claims IconMobile soon cut off communication. In the middle of the year, as Mach 18 executives were interviewing user interface designers for employment, they learned from a candidate that IconMobile had also been recruiting user interface designers “on a project that sounded nearly identical to Mach 18’s project.”

The company accuses its rival of working on a “copycat pitch” to several of Mach 18’s potential business partners within 30 days of hearing Mach 18’s proposal. Mach 18 sued, accusing IconMobile of breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets.

David Enzminger, an attorney in the L.A. and Palo Alto offices of Winston & Strawn who reviewed the case for the Business Journal, said that trade-secret cases with former contractors are common, but usually do not include allegations of direct competition.

“If the allegations are true, you have basically a consultant that has opted to bring the exact same product on its own,” he said. “That strikes me as a pretty brazen situation.”

IconMobile did not return requests for comment.

Industry transformation

Mike VanNieuwkuyk, executive director of the global automotive group at J.D. Power in Troy, Mich., said there is already an auto industry trend to introduce more content and Internet connectivity to cars, which could be accelerated by the introduction of self-driving cars. That would also create more opportunities for branding and marketing to car occupants.

“If we could imagine that the interior experience becomes one where we’re more living in that space, we can connect to the outside world through our preferred sources of entertainment or media,” he said.

It’s not a large jump from mobile marketing to in-vehicle marketing, he added. Car manufacturer executives have in recent years spoken publicly of a mission to make cars the “fourth screen” – after computers, televisions and mobile devices.

“What we are seeing is a lot more wanting to have the vehicle be like smartphones,” VanNieuwkuyk said.

But while being first might be important for companies like Mach 18, there is also a downside to jumping in so early.

“The risk is you invest in the technology and it never goes anywhere,” Daye said. “Once it matures, I think it is an important battle because there’s seemingly a bright future for that market. … Wherever there’s a captive audience or opportunity for one, that’s where marketers want to be.”