Here’s a smattering of interesting things that I noticed over the past few days, or, today in some cases. With that – let’s dive into the randomness!
Garmin-Suunto Lawsuit Update:
You may remember that a few months back I posted about the update of the Suunto lawsuit against Garmin for a variety of things. It was basically a chef’s salad of random patent infringement complaints. Suunto originally sued back in September, but things got spicy with Garmin’s WWF-style smackdown in late December. And then atop that, Garmin countersued Suunto for an equal random arrangement of patent infringement allegations.
Annnnyyyywaaays….
The two companies have mostly been trading various legal procedural stuff, but one notable one happened a few weeks back with Suunto’s parent company Dongguan Liesheng. As a two-second backstory, when Suunto sued Garmin, it was Suunto proper seeing Garmin. But when Garmin countersued, they expanded it to Suunto’s parent company Dongguan Liesheng by including a bunch of mostly no-name watches that Dongguan Liesheng sells in the US on Amazon. Legally, that was a very creative move because it ‘made it real’ for Dongguan Liesheng by effectively flipping the script and holding virtually all of their watches hostage. Essentially, Garmin decided to play hardball.
In fact, DL basically notes this in their filing, saying:
“The circumstances of Dongguan’s inclusion as a Counterclaim-Defendant strongly suggest that Garmin’s purpose in naming Dongguan was not to vindicate a legitimate infringement claim, but rather to impose the burden and expense of federal patent litigation on the foreign parent company of its litigation adversary as a tactical maneuver. “
To which, I’m sure both Garmin and anyone who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night would say: “Well, yeah, duh”.
That bit of backstory noted, back a few weeks ago Dongguan Liesheng tried to dismiss this counterclaim with a pretty robust filing to the court. This included both non-patent-specific notes, as well as a pretty long 20-page breakdown of the specific patent in question, including raising some fairly notable technical points (as I did around the flashlight piece). But, as any lawyer would know – there’s a time and a place for arguments about the merit/validity of the patent in question. This isn’t that time, it’s putting the cart in front of the horse.
Meaning, while Dongguan Liesheng may have a point there (or may not, it gets *VERY* deep into the weeds real darn quick), it doesn’t get them off the hook for having that conversation down the road.
Thus, the judge ruled a very short ‘nope’, saying:
“CAME ON FOR CONSIDERATION, Dongguan Liesheng Electronic Technologyh Co., Ltd.’s Motion to Dismiss Garmin’s Claim for Infringement of the ‘351 Patent. Having considered the motion it is hereby DENIED.”
After that, Dongguan Liesheng filed a response to the court again yesterday that was pretty angry-sounding. Less so at the court, and more so at Garmin’s legal team.
“Instead, Dongguan’s Motion demonstrates that it accepts those allegations as true, as required at this stage, but points out that Garmin’s own allegations, when taken as true, are irreconcilably inconsistent with the requirements of Garmin’s own patent. This is not a factual dispute. It is a facially apparent logical contradiction within Garmin’s own pleading.”
Dongguan Liesheng seems pretty annoyed at the fact that Garmin dared expand this game of battleship to their Dongguan Liesheng watches, rather than just Suunto’s watches. Again, whether or not Dongguan Liesheng is right or wrong is besides the point here, as the correct legal term for the situation they find themselves in is just: FAFO.
Ultimately, I still suspect Dongguan Liesheng will eventually drop everything here. And again, as I noted before, I get the (very strong) impression from talking to lots of people that nobody at Suunto proper wants this lawsuit. This was very much a Dongguan Liesheng thing, coming in and seemingly thinking Garmin was going to be easy pickings for a standard patent-troll type case. Why they thought that was beyond me (or anyone else I’ve talked to). Garmin is well known for not losing many patent cases. And far more critically, Garmin has an unfathomably larger number of patents they can countersue Dongguan Liesheng with (as they’re doing here).
If there was ever a worthwhile betting pool, it’d be for when Dongguan Liesheng realizes this and moves to dismiss. After all, even Strava only took a few weeks to realize the gravity of their error.
FORM Smart Swim 2 LT – Budget Edition:
FORM, the maker of a heads-up display goggle, has introduced a new budget-friendly version. As you may remember, they’re on what is effectively their 3rd generation now. There was the original FORM Swim google, then the V2 goggle that added heart rate sensing, and then the V2 Pro that added more scratch-resistant glass. This new LT edition essentially takes the base V2 goggle (which includes updated internals and a thinned-down form factor), but doesn’t have heart rate sensing of the V2, or the newer Gorilla Glass aspects of the Pro. But otherwise has all the same software features.
Here’s a quick comparison chart of the three of them:
Also of note in there is that SwimStraight is included in all glasses, without a subscription required. That’s the piece that outdoors keeps you going in a straight direction with a little mini-compass. Likewise, the Pro edition got reduced in price from $299 to $259, and then HeadCoach now includes all stroke types, whereas previously it was freestyle only.
I suspect the $149 price point will be much more interesting for a bunch of folks that might be skeptical about it, rather than the higher-priced options.
Peloton & Spotify Deepen Connection
Finally, I thought this was mildly interesting, at least enough to mention. Certain Peloton classes now appear within Spotify. These classes include Strength, Stretching, Yoga, Meditation, Floor Cardio, Outdoor Running, Walking, Pilates, and Barre. Meaning classes that you generally don’t need much, if any, additional equipment for (save some weights for some strength classes).
In this case, you don’t need to be a Peloton subscriber, but rather just on Spotify. The idea here is to eventually convince people to jump over to Peloton. Plus, I suspect there’s a Spotify-driven element of trying to push people more and more to the platform for non-audio things (e.g. video content, including video podcasts).
That said, both finding and figuring out the content is kinda a mess. Simply searching for ‘Peloton’ within the Spotify app doesn’t really prioritize any of this stuff. Instead, I’m confronted with just a giant pile of both user-created and Peloton-created playlists. I guess in my head, I’d have thought Peloton would be treated as an ‘artist’, and then somehow within that I’d find workouts in a similar manner that I’d find albums/songs. But sorted better. Instead, it’s just haphazard and impossible to easily find everything.
The ‘best’ starting point is Spotify’s announcement page, but even that is super slim on jumping-off points. I suspect they want you to go to the ‘Fitness’ hub, which currently prioritizes Peloton towards the top, but again, there’s no clear ‘All Things Peloton’ home page. Or, if there is, I can’t find it (and they don’t like to it anywhere in the press materials, announcement page, or Spotify app)…which honestly tells you all you need to know.
With that – thanks for reading!
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