A federal court in Chicago dismissed one of 11 claims made by Counselor Top 40 supplier S&S Activewear (asi/84358) that promo industry service provider PromoHunt illegally accessed its proprietary data. A trial date for the remaining claims hasn’t been set.

A lawsuit, filed last September by law firm Sidley Austin on behalf of the Bolingbrook, IL-based supplier, accuses PromoHunt of using its own browser extension offering, which allows users to compare supplier prices and “hijack S&S’s sales.”

According to the lawsuit, PromoHunt’s Price Comparison Tool displays competitor prices and products on S&S’s website. When users click on these comparisons, they are redirected off S&S’s site and onto the PromoHunt platform. S&S alleges that PromoHunt violated various federal and state laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Trade Secrets Act, and the Lanham Act, among others.

The lawsuit S&S filed contains 11 claims against PromoHunt, including one for “trespass to chattels” under Illinois law, which protects a person’s right to control or possess their movable personal property.

That specific claim was dismissed by Judge Thomas M. Durkin. According to the court opinion and order written by Durkin, “the alleged ‘trespass’ is not to any aspect of S&S’s website that is in its possession. Rather, S&S alleges that Defendants’ Price Comparison Tool alters the appearance of S&S’s website in a consumer’s web browser on the consumer’s computer.”

The opinion also noted that S&S doesn’t “possess” the “published output” of its website as it appears on a third-party consumer’s computer, referencing a similar case that ruled website copy on a consumer’s computer didn’t fall under exclusive possession or control because “once the website copy is generated and sent to the user’s device, users have control over what to do with it – whether to click on a link on [the plaintiff’s] sites, resize the page, navigate away from the page themselves, or click on one of the links provided in the results.”

“The court’s dismissal of S&S Activewear’s ‘trespass to chattels’ claim,” Tony Wavering, founder and CEO of PromoHunt, told Counselor, “is a win for the thousands of small and midsize distributors who rely on PromoHunt’s free tools to see information in their workflow as they visit supplier websites that aid them in making good purchasing decisions that help their businesses. We look forward to resolving the remaining claims and continuing to stand up for our business and for our customers as this matter proceeds.”

He also noted that S&S Activewear and alphabroder, which S&S acquired in 2024, “both collaborated with PromoHunt for years without raising concerns about our services.”

Wavering added that PromoHunt’s apparel price comparison feature, which is central to the lawsuit, “allows distributors to connect their own supplier account credentials to access their own account-specific pricing – information suppliers already provide to them directly.” According to Wavering, PromoHunt has never shared, and will never share, any supplier’s information with their competitors.

According to the decision, S&S doesn’t hold a property right in the consumer’s internet viewing decisions. “To the extent enabling the Price Comparison Tool constitutes a trespass, Defendants aren’t the ones committing it,” the opinion reads.

The judge dismissed the claim with prejudice, meaning S&S can’t refile that specific claim. The ruling applies only to one of S&S’s 11 claims; the remaining 10 claims are still pending and awaiting a court date.

PromoHunt also filed counterclaims against S&S in January 2026, a few months after S&S filed the original suit. The amended claim alleges that an S&S-affiliated entity created deceptive accounts and unlawfully attempted to disable PromoHunt’s browser extension.

According to a spokesperson from Davis Wright Tremaine, the firm representing PromoHunt in the suit, no motions requesting a ruling have been filed for the remaining S&S claims or PromoHunt’s counterclaims.

Contacted by Counselor for this story, a spokesperson from S&S Activewear said the company can’t comment on active litigation. Sidley Austin, which represents S&S Activewear in the lawsuit, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

S&S Activewear ranks second on Counselor’s most recent list of top suppliers in the industry, with estimated 2024 North American revenue of $3.6 billion.