Nike, Apple hit with lawsuit over ripping Nike+iPod idea
By Darren Murph 
posted Oct 3rd 2007 8:12AM
posted Oct 3rd 2007 8:12AM
Another day, another lawsuit aimed at Cupertino. This time, however, a Utah-based company is bringing Nike along for the ride, as it claims that the two firms willfully created and sold the Nike+iPod Sport Kit after refusing to incorporate their patent into the product. Apparently, Leaper Footwear successfully "patented in 1998 a unique breed of shoes which measures locomotive performance parameters such as a user's walking or running speed and / or distance traveled." Furthermore, Nike allegedly refused to take interest in the firm's patent, while it eventually went on to pursue and craft the same type of product some six years later. As predicted, the two plaintiffs are hoping to garner a (presumably large) sum of money "to be determined at trial, a permanent injunction barring Apple and Nike from further infringement on their patent" and a court order that they receive "three times the damages assessed at trial due to the willful and deliberate nature of Nike's actions."[Thanks, Mark]
yawn..wake me up when 1.1.1 is about to get unlocked.
Please, please someone sue Microsoft because Vista is crap
No. Go home.
You mean Vista Home or XP Home?
Feeding the troll here... Vista has some serious issues. Here are some I've encountered lately:
- I hook up to a projector, it flickers in and out of resolution at random.
- I load a certain Java applet in a web browser, Aero turns off glass. For everything.
- Speed is terrible... I've timed it, a completely new Vista system takes nearly 3 times as long to startup as a 7-month old OS X system, from OS boot to the point that the hard drive stops being accessed after login. I'm pretty sure it's also slower than XP.
I could go on... I have a whole list of issues. I'm just tired of folks like tits comparing a supposedly "stable" production Vista system to beta products coming from a Mac, running in a Windows environment, and pretending that the experience is that same as on a Mac itself. My experience says the opposite.
Oh, by the way, I use Firefox all the time on my Windows box... but Safari is 10 times as stable as Firefox on Mac. And Firefox is more stable than IE on Windows, so far as I've seen (number of crashes and such). Not a completely fair comparison, but certainly no less fair than yours.
i like how everyone i always like "Vista sucks" "its so unstable"... blah blah blah.
let me ask you something... when you first installed vista did it have any problems on their machines? nope. I was on the beta for vista too, and i can verify that there were alot of stability problems. The only thing i would say negative about vista is the fact that it didn't have enough development time for 3rd party devs before release.
And Thats a large cause of the problems. Back in the 90s unix people had to go through the same problems when they learned that you can't stay logged into root. Same idea with vista, thats why it comes up with the annoying UI "are you sure".
whatever I've been using vista for a few years and i love it... don't blame the OS for the program/driver instability though. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying its a perfect program... what i'm saying is its a great improvement on a lot of ideas that have been due 10 years ago! ABOUT TIME!
just my 2 cents.
how is it apple isnt closing its doors? every other month i hear them getting sued for stealing features or something
i guess thats what you get for not being innovative
No, that's what you get for being successful. Every asshat on earth sues trying to get a piece of your hard-earned cash.
The suit talks big but I bet Apple will toss those losers a couple mill to settle and this whole thing will go away and the Nike+ kit will live on and those jerks will disappear.
no, being successful just draws more light to you when you steal companies/peoples ideas.
I really was going to say something insightful, but the relevance of the previous fanboys comments neutralized that thought.
WTF? The shoes don't do anything! They just have a slot for the sensor. So I guess all shoe and pedometer makers should get sued too!
I have a pair of Nike +s and you are correct. They are nothing special unless you remove the insole and put that pedometer chip down into the base of the shoe. I don't see how there is any basis for a lawsuit since the shoe itself does nothing special without some other piece of technology. I'm faily certain Leaper Footwear never in their wildest dreams thought about inventing a device that could wirelessly communicate with an iPod. Seems like bunk to me.
You cannot patent an idea. You can only patent the implementation of the idea. As long as Nike/Apple didn't copy the implentation, this company is out of luck. And, as it seems to me there would be a multitude of ways to implement this particular idea, I'd guess they're out of luck.
Mod parent up. People ALWAYS seem to forget this simple fact. It's the implementation that's important. If you implement the concept differently, you're not violating the patent.
Don't close down Nike or Apple!
Think of all those poor Asian sweatshop owners won't ya?
Between the two of them they probably employ a great deal of them.
How the hell can you sue based on doing the same function? Apple & Nike are not doing it the same way as the other company. The recording device is an iPod which wasn't invented until 2001. Their patent was 1998. That alone is a differentiation.
By that token, Tim Berners-Lee should sue every other browser maker even though the implementation code is different.
I hope Nike gets rinsed.
1. Because they're asstarts
2. Big companies copy ideas that are presented to them all the time. When you're a small company and have a good idea, you generally have to go to a bigger company to get the product off the ground. And a lot of the time, the big company just says "nice idea, screw you".
Apple have done it before aswell (Remember the photographer who presented apple with a photo idea, and they just nicked it and told him they didn't want it).
I work for a high-tech start up company, and the one thing that keeps me soiling my pants at night is the possibility that one of the companies that we're working with will just nick our ideas, and without the funding they have, we aint got any real defence against it.
In response to number 2...
This is why you draft up and go into a contractual agreement with a company who is interesting in your invention. If your dumb enough to give them your idea without any strings, you deserve to get it stolen in my opinion. And if your company doesn't like it, go elsewhere, its a free country.
Even with an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and a patent (which I presume this company must have had), big companies will still go behind your back.
If you cant match them £ for £ in court then you cant sue them, sure they pay your legal fees if you win, but you cant take a risk like that else you can get completely burnt
Nike+ is the only reason I'm not going with a Zune Flash for my girlfriend.
For all you armchair patent attorneys out there, you might be interested in knowing that a letter was sent to Nike in 2000 in an attempt to integrate the technology into a pair of shoes and Nike said they weren't interested in the idea. Then, 6 years later, they released a 'similar' product in that it is a tracking method for various actions using 'similar' technology. The term similar has obvious personal bias and is open to interpretation based on your particular tilt towards technology protections. As others have said, feel free to patent something after investing 6-15k for a basic patent alone, add into that all your time, money, effort, blood, sweat, and tears... then let a megacorporation take the fundamental concept and technology after you notify them that you exist and have a technology they can use. We'll see you on the cover of Engadget and Ars, and a whole host of other blogs immediately after you discover they've made millions while you struggle to get your product seen. No, that won't happen of course, you'll blame yourself for not marketing adequately or that your product sucks. Yah, I'm sure.
In the german business magazine brand.eins 08/2007 p. 60ff there is a story about three Germans who had the very same idea already patented in 2000, that was six years later put to market by Nike+Apple. Of course, they had presented it to them - without being offered a buy-out. A similar patent application from Nike was refused by the patent office in 2005, because it would have violated the prior patent. After a while that Nike+Apple had been successfully selling the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, the inventors finally sold their rights for a bargain to a L.A. based law firm. Strange story but worth reading if you know German and can get hold of a copy of above mentioned issue.
I love how some idiots, that had 6 years to create their idea, never did, are now suing someone else for acctually doing it. ahhh america, file enough patents and no one will be able to do or create anything! yaay!
wtf- patenting an idea and sitting on it just so you can sue a corporation should be declared terrorism. Then maybe our crappy government would actually pay some attention.
Trying to get major corporations in the same line of business as your idea to manufacture and sell a product incorporating your idea is sitting on it?
What exactly does it take to qualify as NOT sitting on an idea? You know, not everyone has 4 or 5 million sitting around. I suppose I'm just in the unfortunate minority of those that don't have that kind of cash laying around because it's hard for me to relate to people that do.
Considering that there is now a legal precedent for "obviousness" of a patent, these guys might not get what they want.
Our patenting system is such a bucket of shit.
Agreed
nike+apple, eh?
all your sweatshops are belong to us!
And it took them this long why?!?!? I say no tangible product, no patent. Shame on you for not bringing it to market. If the idea is so great, show some initiative. I hate these Johnny Come Lately claiming to have the idea first. I don't buy it.