Mirror, mirror on the wall: Nike sues Lululemon over Mirror Home Gym
Towards the start of the pandemic, Lululemon—an American-Canadian athletic apparel company—acquired home fitness tech start-up Mirror for $500 million in July 2020. Eighteen months later, on January 5, 2022, Nike opened court proceedings at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York claiming Lululemon’s Home Mirror Gym infringed six of its patents.
Nike is seeking damages for which it contends is intentional unauthorised use of the patented inventions and an injunction from the court to prevent Lululemon from using the protected features.
Recent home fitness litigation
This is just the latest in a series of recent, high profile litigation cases involving big names in the home fitness market. In December 2021, Nike filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission in Washington accusing Adidas of copying its patented Flyknit trainer technology. Nike claimed it cost over $100 million and more than a decade of research and development to invent Flyknit, which debuted at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Lululemon is also no stranger to patent litigation, having been sued by Peloton over a new line of athletic apparel in November 2021. This was quickly followed by Lululemon counter-suing Peloton under the accusation that Peloton was infringing several of Lululemon’s own design patents. More specifically in the field of smart exercise equipment, Peloton has been defending its patent portfolio that protects the technology used in the home exercise bikes the company are best known for.
Lululemon’s Mirror Home Gym
The Mirror Home Gym, which is at the centre of Nike’s complaint, is a display that discretely fits into the surroundings of a home and when not switched on has the appearance of an ordinary wall mirror.
The Mirror Home Gym appears to be targeted towards those who have been prevented from going to their regular in-person gyms due to the pandemic and as such have become accustomed to the convenience of exercising at home but do not want to clutter their living space with bulky treadmills or exercise bikes.
The flagship feature of the device is that a simulated personal trainer can guide the user through a range of exercises from callisthenics to strength training, all within a home environment where space could potentially be at a premium.
"This is just the latest in a series of recent, high profile litigation cases involving big names in the home fitness market."
Activity and fitness data can be collected from sensors on paired devices, such as the company’s own smart weights that track reps, with the information used to calculate performance and health metrics. These metrics enable the user to personalise their workout objectives according to their level of fitness and visualise their progress with respect to previous days’ activity data. For those who enjoy the social aspect of gyms, the device includes a feature enabling users to connect with friends in order to remotely compete in exercise routines and games.
The Mirror Home Gym is currently being sold within the US market starting at $1,195 but as the device itself contains no sensors other than a camera, Lululemon offers a more expensive bundle that includes connected accessories which enable enhanced performance metrics and make the overall user experience more interactive.
Nike’s history of fitness tech
Nike has a successful history of bringing fitness tech to market, and in their complaint against Lululemon they state their mission is to bring “inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world, with the belief that if you have a body, you are an athlete”.
The American multinational corporation made their first foray into the home fitness industry in 1983 when they invented and successfully patented a device to be worn by a user that enabled the collection, processing and analysis of running data.
It has since marketed several other fitness devices which all contain some form of interaction with the user via the collection of activity data, examples of these include the Nike+ sport watch and the Nike+ Kinect. Over the years, Nike has built up a substantial patent portfolio within the home fitness space.
Nike’s patents
With regard to Lululemon’s Mirror Home Gym, Nike accuses the company of making and disposing of a product that infringes six of its currently active patents. The referenced patents include: “method and apparatus claims for prompting the user to exercise at specific activity levels determined by the physical fitness of the user”, “generating streak points when a user exceeds an activity goal for a pre-determined number of consecutive periods”, and a “device to be worn by a user that collects movement data captured by a sensor and calculating fitness scores for measuring progress”.
Moreover, of relevance to the games and competition functionality of the Mirror Home Gym, there is a Nike patent protecting the use of devices which separately collect athletic activity data from two users who are remotely located from one another, wherein the data is utilised such that the users may virtually compete in an athletic activity.
Whilst the validity of Nike’s six patents remains to be seen, what can be said is that its claimed priority dates range from 2003 to 2012, which spans an incredibly significant time period for consumer technology and social media.
Lululemon’s response
In response to the complaint, Lululemon said in a statement: "The patents in question are overly broad and invalid. We are confident in our position and look forward to defending it in court."
Stating a patent is invalid is the standard defence to an allegation of infringement because a patent that is invalid cannot be enforced. However, Lululemon so far does not appear to have offered detailed reasoning behind its assertion that Nike’s patents are invalid.
It is difficult to predict with any certainty how Nike’s complaint against Lululemon will play out, given we are at such an early stage in the proceedings. Patent litigation can be an expensive process, and it is not unusual for such proceedings to end in settlement. So to find out what happens next, we must watch and wait (unless that is, anyone has a magic mirror who can answer the question for us).
James Leach is a partner at Mewburn Ellis. They can be contacted at: james.leach@mewburn.com
Toby Hill is a trainee attorney at Mewburn Ellis. They can be contacted at: toby.hill@mewburn.com
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