Boston quilt company says it's uncovered a group trying to rip it off

Project Repat, a Jamaica Plain company that takes people's old T-shirts and remakes them into quilts, is suing a Rhode Island company it says stole its trade secrets and customer lists.

Repat charges that American Quilt Co. is actually run by a team of videographers Repat in 2014 to produce promotional videos and handle its online presence - including one person who goes by the alias of Joe McMillan - "an unethical character on the AMC television series 'Halt and Catch Fire,' who steals intellectual property to unfairly compete with his former friends."

In its lawsuit, filed this week in US District Court in Boston, Repat charges the principals of InfoWhip of Providence used their time with Repat to acquire "a wealth of highly confidential information concerning Repat’s advertising strategy and best practices, which were the product of at least three years of trial and error and considerable expense."

Repat, founded by Nathan Rothstein and Ross Lohr, says InfoWhip kept accessing Repat e-mail long after Repat had terminated its contract:

The email tracking software used by Repat, Yesware, indicates that as recently as October 18, 2016, while in Houston, Texas, one or more Defendants accessed a June 2, 2015 email between Repat and IndieWhip that contained Repat’s Trade Secrets, including but not limited to information concerning Repat’s customer acquisition costs.

Repat is asking a judge to make American Quilty knock it off, return all the purloined data and pay unspecified damages.