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Best of Golf >
Golf Equipment >
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In addition to fearing litigation by
other companies,
many manufacturers also have become sensitive
to the
risks of lawsuits by
individuals like
Nike
suer Gillig
claiming that
the company’s products
are based
on their
drawings, however sketchy or
rudimentary.
TaylorMade refuses to accept
any
unsolicited club or ball
designs—virtually every idea that
comes in is
automatically shipped
right back
before a designer
can lay eyes on it, according
to
Bill
Reimus,
TaylorMade’s
general counsel. Otherwise,
he says, “proving a
negative—that
we didn’t use the
design—could be very
difficult.”
In such
cases, some
companies have decided
the best
defense is to
prove
that the
patent in
question isn’t original. That’s
where
they often call on club
collector
Ellis,
who serves as an
expert witness
by helping defendants
prove
that a certain
design
feature had been
around for decades, if not
centuries.
Ellis
recalls one recent case in
which an
entrepreneur
claimed he
had
developed and
patented a
rear-weighted putter and sued an equipment giant
for
infringing on his
idea. Ellis showed up at trial with more
than 140
clubs,
including a rare Andrew
Dixon putter
from the 1600s, all of
which
incorporated
some or all
of the design elements the
plaintiff
claimed he had invented.
In the
end, Ellis recalls,
the plaintiff
agreed to
settle the suit for just one percent
of the damages
he was
seeking, or just enough to cover his
legal
bills.
“He
didn’t
create anything new in any
respect,” says
Ellis. “There’s little
that’s
new, but most
golfers
don’t realize
that.”
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Cleveland HiBore XLS
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 By
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Cleveland’s tweaks to the XLS hybrid have real benefits, both in performance and appearance
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 By
Tom Cunneff
The AP1 is a good crossover club that may appeal to mid handicappers
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