“A little-known athletic company from Utah has filed a lawsuit that names both Nike and Apple, claiming that Nike knowingly stole its decade-old idea for the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider.
“Brothers Greg and Kenny Anderson of Leaper Footwear, LLC say they invented in 1995 and successfully patented in 1998 a unique breed of footwear which — like the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit co-developed by Nike and Apple — measures locomotive performance parameters such as a user’s walking or running speed and/or distance traveled,” Jade reports.
“Leaper’s complaint is the second to target both Apple and Nike over allegations that the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit makes unauthorized use of patenting technology. In January, Colorodo-based PhatRat Technology filed a similar suit, charging both companies with infringing on four of its own patents,” Jade reports.
More details in the full article here.
Lance Armstrong on Nike+iPod video:
How Nike+iPod works video:
Patents are stupid.
If you can figure it out / reverse engineer it… do it…. This is where communism would shine… (unfortunatly.. its the only place it would)
Just a few comments on the various comments:
1. If they have a valid patent since 1998 (and I said IF), the fact that you’ve never heard of them makes no difference. If (and again, I said IF) their patent represents a new invention or process, then they have protection even though no one has heard of them and Apple/Nike came up with their idea without any knowledge of the earlier invention.
2. Patent cases are heard in a special court that hears nothing but patent cases and where the judges have a high degree of technical expertise. Patent cases are also “loser pays” although a losing defendant probably will be assessed legal fees and court costs if their claim was frivolous.
3. You can’t sue the Patent Office for issuing an invalid patent, and, moreover, nothing in the piece says that Apple/Nike have a patent on this process. The Patent Office merely evaluates the invention or process, sees whether it meets the requisite requirements for originality and non-obviousness and gives the inventor a piece of paper essentially saying that. The piece of paper allows them to stop anyone else from using the invention without permission, but if a person uses a patented invention or process, the government won’t step in and stop them. There is no patent police. If you have a patent that you think was infringed, you have to sue and one big part of the case will be that you will have to prove the validity of your patent.
4. Either the patent is valid or it isn’t. If it isn’t then Apple/Nike are in the clear. If it is, then it makes no difference whether or not the iPod was invented in 1998. If the patent covers sending exercise data from a shoe to a portable device, it makes no difference which shoe or which portable device is invloved.
I mistyped above. When I said “a losing defendant” I meant “a losing plaintiff.”
You would think that if you are smart enough to come up with the idea you would be smart enough to sell it to a large company like Nike or Reebok
Remember Nike+Philips, brought out an MP3 player and shoe sensor long before Apple was even in the picture with this product.
Apple wasn’t even the innovator here, just a follower using Nike technology.
“If you can figure it out / reverse engineer it… do it…. “
Yeah, property rights suck. If you see a nice house you like, just move in, if you see a car you like, take it…
Patents exist to allow companies to innovate without the fear that some-body’s going to capture all the benefit of their effort.
Imagine if everybody sat around waiting to copy other people, where would the ideas to copy come from?
It’d be exactly like communism where everybody sits around expecting that somebody else will work hard…
Well actually the ancient Greeks, Romans, Chinese & Egyptians invented half of everything first, modern man just re-invented it. Like the pedometer. The Romans invented a gear powered wheeled device that traveled down their roads and dropped pebbles into a tray when it traveled a physical distance of 1 mile, each pebble counted as 1 mile in distance.