The best thinking in the golf equipment business these days isn’t confined to
the manufacturers’ R&D departments. There are plenty of late nights being
logged in their legal offices as well. For every engineer developing a driver
with higher moment of inertia, for every chemist working on a softer yet more
durable ball cover, there is likely to be a lawyer quarreling over the patents
behind those innovations.
Golf’s litigious side came to the fore recently in
Bridgestone Sports Co. v. Acushnet Company, in which Bridgestone contended that
the Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x balls (Acushnet is Titleist’s parent company)
infringed on key elements of Bridgestone’s three-piece ball patented in the
1990s. Lawyers for both sides bombarded each other for two years with thousands
of pages of claims and counterclaims that included more than a few bad golf
puns, like when Acushnet’s lawyers implored the judge that “Bridgestone is
asking for a mulligan here.”With the trial approaching and the judge
appearing sympathetic to Bridgestone’s case, Acushnet settled last fall for a
substantial sum in back-license fees plus future royalties on sales of the ProV1
line of balls.
The plaintiffs aren’t necessarily large companies. In 2004
Jack Gillig, a Texas entrepreneur, sued Nike Golf, claiming that he had
shared ideas scribbled out on paper with Nike’s chief club designer, Tom Stites.
Gillig alleged that Stites incorporated those ideas into Nike’s CPR woods and
Slingshot irons without permission. After several twists and turns, an appellate
judge dismissed the case.
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