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Law360 (March 31, 2020, 6:31 PM EDT ) TaylorMade Golf Co. has reached a preliminary agreement to settle a patent dispute over golf swing analyzer products, despite telling a California federal judge last week that its opponent was using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to further delay the litigation.
In a Monday filing with the court, TaylorMade Golf Co. said it has reached an "agreement in principle" to end a lawsuit by rival NewSpin Sports LLC, which accused TaylorMade and motion tracking company Blast Motion Inc. of selling golf products that infringe its patents.
On the same day, U.S. District Judge Jill L. Burkhardt agreed to issue a 30-day stay as the companies finalize the terms of the settlement deal. The companies have until April 29 to file a joint motion to throw out the suit, according to the judge's order.
The latest developments come after NewSpin's request last week to push back a claim construction deadline, saying the pandemic has caused "significant disruption to counsels' respective abilities to confer internally as well as with their clients and retained experts."
"These disruptions to normal operations will hinder plaintiff's ability to meet upcoming claim construction deadlines apart from the discovery issues," NewSpin said. It added that counsel for TaylorMade and Blast Motion had also cited the pandemic in requesting more time to comply with another deadline last week.
TaylorMade and Blast Motion disputed that notion, telling Judge Burkhart that the claim construction issues have already been identified and submitted to the court and that "all that is left to do is file the claim construction briefs electronically."
"While defendants are mindful of the evolving nature and difficulties associated with the restrictions associated with COVID-19, NewSpin does not present sufficient justification to delay the proceedings at this time," TaylorMade and Blast Motion said.
They added that arguing that a claim construction brief cannot be submitted remotely has "the same effect of arguing that no court deadline can be met. But this cannot be true, given that NewSpin filed the instant ex parte motion."
And this is the first time NewSpin has said it lacks documents needed for claim construction, an assertion that is "both false and baseless," they said.
"NewSpin has all the documents necessary for claim construction," TaylorMade and Blast Motion said in its response brief.
NewSpin was founded by Angelo Papadourakis, a former stock index trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange who quit to focus on his ideas for a golf club swing analyzer in 2007. NewSpin's SwingSmart hit the market in 2012, and Papadourakis was granted patents for his technology in 2016 and 2017, per his suit.
The SwingSmart attaches to a golf club near the grip and captures data on each swing, such as "swing tempo, shaft lean, swing speed and club face angle, among others," according to NewSpin's complaint lodged in 2018.
Blast Motion sells a similar product that attaches to the bottom of a baseball bat or golf club, NewSpin said, and TaylorMade sells a golf club that it developed with Blast Motion known as the Spider Interactive Powered by Blast, which incorporates sensors into a specially designed club.
Both products infringe NewSpin's patents, it said in the suit. The patents cover "systems and methods implementing a motion sensor unit to capture motion data relating to movement of an object usable in a sport or leisure activity, such as a baseball bat or golf club," and using "captured data wirelessly transmitted to a processor for processing to determine one or more derived metrics describing movement of the object."
Counsel for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
The patents-in-suit are U.S. Patent Nos. 9,656,122; 8,831,905; and 8,589,114.
NewSpin is represented by Frederick W. Kosmo Jr. and Hubert Kim of Wilson Turner Kosmo LLP and Jonathan T. Suder and Richard A. Wojcio of Friedman Suder & Cooke.
TaylorMade and Blast Motion are represented by James C. Yoon, Sara L. Tolbert and Jamie Y. Otto of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC.
The case is NewSpin Sports LLC v. Blast Motion Inc. et al., case number 3:18-cv-02273, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
--Additional reporting by Ryan Boysen and Hailey Konnath. Editing by Daniel King.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
