After seven-minute hearing, US Marshals raid a CES booth
Two United States Marshals raided a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday afternoon, walking away with several one-wheeled electric scooters.
The company that makes the scooters, Changzhou First International Trade Co., was sued by American company Future Motion, on two claims of alleged patent infringement.
Changzhou hasn’t made any formal legal response or yet had a chance to defend itself against the claims. Future Motion’s lawyers filed their motion in federal court in Las Vegas on Tuesday and then had a hearing by telephone on Wednesday. After the hearing, which lasted just seven minutes, US District Judge Miranda Du issued an order that Changzhou’s products be seized and that it stop sales.
Acting on the emergency court order, the marshals quietly disassembled the Changzhou booth and seized “five to six” scooters along with some marketing materials, according to Future Motion’s attorney, Shawn Kolitch, who was present for the raid.
“This was unusually fast—I’ve never heard of a situation where anybody was able to get a [temporary restraining order] and a seizure the same day,” he told Ars. “I think the reason that it was exceptionally fast was that we emphasized in the motion that the harm that we were most concerned about was the attention that this product would get at CES.”
He described the raid as “very orderly.”
“They didn’t resist the proceedings at all,” he added.
Future Motion is currently selling its “Onewheel” scooter, which it first debuted at CES two years ago. The startup then raised more than $630,000 on Kickstarter and began selling the Onewheel in late December 2014. The product is now availablethrough its website for $1,499.
Changzhou sells its scooter through the Chinese online retailer Alibaba for roughly one-third that price.
“We took action against Changzhou first because it was a direct knockoff,” Kyle Doerksen, the CEO of Future Motion, the company behind the Onewheel scooter, told Ars. “When you look at our patent design drawings and the products they had at CES, you see a direct comparison.”
Ars reached a Changzhou employee named Renee by phone at the company’s Wujin offices. She asked that questions be sent via e-mail to her and to her colleague, Leo. We e-mailed both people and will update the story if we hear back.
“Basically we introduced the first single-wheeled product, and that’s what we launched in 2014,” Doerksen added. “Nothing like that was ever for sale before one-wheel—it really is unique.”
He pointed out that many of the other forward-facing so-called “hoverboards” have suffered from a lack of clarity in the market. “What we’ve seen in the two-wheel products, there’s a lot of confusion who the innovators are and who the copycats are,” he said. “In our category since we clearly are the innovator, it’s very important that we act aggressively to protect the patent rights that we have.”
Changzhou will have a chance to present its formal defense in a hearing before Judge Du on January 14, 2016.
“When we have an in-person hearing in Las Vegas, and they will be able to present any defenses,” Kolitch added. “Then the judge could easily overturn her own order and return their product; she could theoretically forfeit Future Motion’s $10,000 bond for that reason. But, I feel confident that would not happen.”
Article Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/us-marshals-raid-booth-grab-chinese-scooters-from-ces/