Spinning creator accuses Peloton of patent infringement
Mad Dogg Athletics, a manufacturer of indoor exercise bikes, has claimed that Peloton is infringing two patents covering “core features of a stationary exercise bike” designed to simulate an instructor-led class.
In a suit filed yesterday December 14 at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Mad Dogg claimed that Peloton has built a multi-billion dollar business “based in large part on Mad Dogg’s pioneering patented inventions in the indoor cycling market”.
The suit comes just three days after it was announced that Peloton will be joining the Nasdaq-100 index, which is composed of the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock market.
Mad Dogg alleges that it created the indoor cycling market with the introduction of its spinning bikes and programmes in the early 1990s.
The California-based company was founded by cyclists and entrepreneurs John Baudhuin and Johnny Goldberg (known as Johnny G in the spinning community). Shortly after incorporation in 1994, the company registered and trademarked the ‘Spin’, ‘Spinning’ and ‘Spinner’ names for its range of bikes, programmes and products.
Now, Mad Dogg has claimed that Peloton’s Bike+—released in September this year—is infringing two patents. The patents, US numbers 9,694,240 and 10,137,328, are both called “Programmed exercise bicycle with computer-aided guidance”.
Mad Dogg has asked the court to find that Peloton is infringing the patents, determine damages at trial, and grant injunctive relief.
Baudhuin, co-founder and CEO of Mad Dogg, said: “We revolutionised the indoor cycling category in 2008 with the eSpinner bike which featured the world’s first touch-screen display designed to bring instructor-led coaching and power training straight to the rider’s home.
“Peloton has built its business by freeriding on Mad Dogg’s patent-protected innovations. Peloton cannot compete in the category that Mad Dogg created by trampling on Mad Dogg’s rights.”
In October, another competitor hit Peloton with a patent infringement suit.
Icon Health & Fitness, the company behind home fitness brand NordicTrack, alleged that Peloton infringed its patents through the sale of the Bike+ product and was continuing a “pattern of infringement”.
In response, Peloton’s outside litigation counsel claimed that the filing was “nothing more than a continuation of the litigation that Peloton filed against Icon earlier this year, and is a retaliatory filing intended to deflect attention away from Icon’s blatant infringement of Peloton's leaderboard technology and other deceptive practices”.
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