Published
Oct 5, 2017
Reading time
2 minutes
Download
Download the article
Print
Text size

Columbia awarded damages for infringement suit against Seirus

Published
Oct 5, 2017

Columbia Sportswear on Wednesday announced that a jury in the federal district court in San Diego ruled in its favor in its patent lawsuit against Seirus Innovative Accessories. The company on September 29 was awarded damages in the amount of $3.018 million for the infringement.


Columbia Sportswear


The Portland-based company in January 2015 filed a lawsuit against Seirus for infringing on its Omni-Heat Reflective patent. In August 2016, Judge Hernandez granted Columbia’s motion, saying that Columbia and Seirus’ respective designs are very similar and “is likely to confuse an ordinary observer,” and then set the trial for April 2017.
 
“We are very pleased that Seirus has been held accountable for infringing our design patent,” said Peter Bragdon, Columbia’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel. “Seirus continued to promote and sell its infringing HeatWave products even after Judge Hernandez ruled in August 2016 that the products infringed Columbia’s U.S. design patent, unfairly profiting from Columbia’s innovations. We believe all our innovative products provide superior performance and we will continue to aggressively pursue infringing products.”

The amount awarded to Columbia represents Seirus’ total profits from the sale of its infringing HeatWave products, and the company is entitled to prejudgment interest and to seek profits that retailers earned through the sale of the HeatWave products. In addition, the jury found that two claims of one of Columbia’s U.S. Omni-Heat utility patents are invalid.
 
Bragdon added, “We continue to maintain numerous patents around the globe related to our Omni-Heat designs and technology, and will seek to overturn the jury’s partial invalidation of one of our U.S. Omni-Heat patents.”
 
The court rulings are subject to appeal.

Copyright © 2024 FashionNetwork.com All rights reserved.