Cobalt sues Sea Ray over fold-down swim step

[jhnmdahl]

There are better values in small boats than a Sea Ray, and better large boat values than Sea Ray. I think they just don’t have much product differentiation anymore.

I remember when it was the boat to have on Lake Minnetonka. No more.

[Big Block Power]

http://www.boattest.com/view-news/5617_ ... y-for-sale

It was the boat to have. It was very big around us as well.
Outboards is where it's going to. That's not SeaRay.

[Tuscany]

I never considered a sea ray bowrider because they were IMO, wolf ugly..

[Ytmsn]

Here's the story

http://www.boattest.com/view-news/5617_ ... y-for-sale

[AsLan7]

I read that Sea Ray sold over 28,000 boats a year in 1986 when Brunswick bought them, but sold fewer than 2,500 last year. Could be a tough sale...

Malibu buys sea ray. has bonfire.

.That's funny!

[liquid]

I read that Sea Ray sold over 28,000 boats a year in 1986 when Brunswick bought them, but sold fewer than 2,500 last year. Could be a tough sale...

Malibu buys sea ray. has bonfire.

.That's funny!

I thought so too.

[AsLan7]

Except now that Sea Ray knows that Cobalt's patent stood up to re-examination, they have essentially lost that argument in court. Now they have to show they don't infringe, which is a different story. Cobalt's claims are pretty narrow, so Sea Ray could simply come up with a different locking mechanism and be OK, but they may still owe royalties on the swim steps they've produced so far.

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You know your stuff John. The tour guides were discussing this as well during our visit.....


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'Swim Step' Redesign Doesn't Infringe Patent, Judge Says
Share us on: By Tiffany Hu

Law360 (December 12, 2018, 5:18 PM EST) -- After ordering Brunswick Corp. to pay $5.4 million to Cobalt Boats LLC for infringing its patent on “swim steps” for boats, a Virginia federal judge has found that Brunswick’s redesigned swim steps do not infringe the patent because the product is no longer based on a spring-based or locking mechanism.

Brunswick’s product instead relies on friction, a “law of nature [that] is not patentable in and of itself,” U.S. District Judge Henry C. Morgan Jr. said on Tuesday. Despite contentions by Cobalt that the redesign is “nearly identical” and works the same way as Cobalt’s patented design, the judge found that the changes Brunswick made to its swim steps made them sufficiently different from the ones it was found to have infringed.

"The court finds that plaintiff has not presented sufficient evidence by which the court can conclude that defendant's redesign infringes the … patent either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents," Judge Morgan wrote.

The case, over a boat feature that helps swimmers get in and out of the water, had taken a series of twists and turns in the days before trial as Cobalt rival Sea Ray Boats, owned by Brunswick and originally a defendant in the case, tried to shift the case out of Virginia federal court, saying that under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in TC Heartland limiting where patent suits can be filed, the Eastern District of Virginia was no longer the proper venue for the case.

Judge Morgan rejected that request and kept the case in his court, and the Federal Circuit in a split decision in June 2017 refused to overturn his ruling, court records show.

A jury later found that Brunswick had literally infringed one of two claims at issue in Cobalt’s case over its “retractable swim step” technology and concluded the infringement was willful, according to the verdict form.

Brunswick then sought a new trial, arguing it did not infringe, that the verdict conflicted with the weight of the evidence and that the damages, which included a royalty rate of $2,500 per accused submersible swim step product, were excessive.

In October 2017, Judge Morgan awarded $2.5 million in attorneys’ fees to Cobalt after finding that Brunswick’s “pattern of misconduct” had unnecessarily dragged out the trial, tacking on enhanced damages that boosted the compensatory damages to $5.4 million from $2.7 million, after adding on some previously uncounted royalty amounts. The judge concluded that there was scant evidence to bolster Brunswick’s stance that it hadn’t just been trying to narrowly avoid Cobalt’s patent for a swim step on boats when it built its own.

The judge also refused to grant a new trial, finding Brunswick’s request to “based upon ignoring evidence unfavorable to it” and a presumption that its expert witnesses were more credible than Cobalt's.

Earlier this year, Cobalt filed a motion seeking a court order that Brunswick was in contempt of the injunction because its redesigned product continued to infringe, but Judge Morgan declined to find so in his Tuesday ruling.

Counsel for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

The patent-in-suit is U.S. Patent Number 8,375,880.

Cobalt is represented by Robert A. Angle and David M. Gettings of Troutman Sanders LLP, and B. Scott Eidson, Samir R. Mehta, Penny R. Slicer and Colin W. Turner of Stinson Leonard Street LLP.

Brunswick is represented by Stephen E. Noona of Kaufman & Canoles PC, and Jason C. White, Scott D. Sherwin and Julie G. Goldemberg of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP.

The case is Cobalt Boats LLC v. Brunswick Corp., case number 2:15-cv-00021, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
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https://www.law360.com/articles/1110520
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[jhnmdahl]

Aslan, looks like everything played out about as it should have given the facts. Look for Cobalt to start promoting its "locking swim step" in the very near future

[nolaboater99]

Sounds like we've got a few attorneys here...

And just when I was starting to like everybody....

[gdane]

Yep And what the article didn't mention is the fact that the St. Clair's didn't include the judgement in the sale to Malibu so they were able to keep that money along with the sale money received from Malibu!!! Nice call Pack and Packson

[tgrace98]

Yep And what the article didn't mention is the fact that the St. Clair's didn't include the judgement in the sale to Malibu so they were able to keep that money along with the sale money received from Malibu!!! Nice call Pack and Packson

I’m going to guess with how much the family got for the sale that 5.4mil would be considered walking around money to them

[gdane]

Yep And what the article didn't mention is the fact that the St. Clair's didn't include the judgement in the sale to Malibu so they were able to keep that money along with the sale money received from Malibu!!! Nice call Pack and Packson

I’m going to guess with how much the family got for the sale that 5.4mil would be considered walking around money to them

Prolly went to help pay their taxes!

[AsLan7]

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The final nail in the coffin for Cobalt's lawsuit against Brunswick?


Brunswick went with the 180 degree argument.

"
But the issue that ultimately got traction was Stewart’s decision that a convoluted claim term— “configured to permit rotation of said step 180 degrees from a stored position above the water surface”—had a plain and ordinary meaning that could be construed by jurors.

B. Scott Eidson of Stinson Leonard Street argued to the Federal Circuit last month that the 180 degrees wasn’t a hard-and-fast limitation, but instead simply a way of explaining that the top side of the step turns over to become the underside. “In the context of the invention, it flips over,” he told the Federal Circuit.

Kirkland partner John O’Quinn said the claim requires that the step rotate at least a full 180 degrees, and it was undisputed that Brunswick’s step is deliberately designed not to rotate quite that far, to minimize the risk of swimmers slipping into the water. “The claims here don’t say ‘about 180 degrees,’” O’Quinn told the court. “The use of ordinary numbers does not suggest an approximation.”

The Federal Circuit agreed with O’Quinn and Brunswick in Cobalt Boats v. Brunswick. “Where a precise value is included in the claim without a term such as ‘about,’ we interpret the claim language as imposing a strict numerical boundary, absent evidence that such a construction would be inconsistent with the intrinsic evidence,” Judge Timothy Dyk wrote for a unanimous panel. Judges Jimmie Reyna and Evan Wallach concurred."
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[Ytmsn]

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The final nail in the coffin for Cobalt's lawsuit against Brunswick?


Brunswick went with the 180 degree argument.

"
But the issue that ultimately got traction was Stewart’s decision that a convoluted claim term— “configured to permit rotation of said step 180 degrees from a stored position above the water surface”—had a plain and ordinary meaning that could be construed by jurors.

B. Scott Eidson of Stinson Leonard Street argued to the Federal Circuit last month that the 180 degrees wasn’t a hard-and-fast limitation, but instead simply a way of explaining that the top side of the step turns over to become the underside. “In the context of the invention, it flips over,” he told the Federal Circuit.

Kirkland partner John O’Quinn said the claim requires that the step rotate at least a full 180 degrees, and it was undisputed that Brunswick’s step is deliberately designed not to rotate quite that far, to minimize the risk of swimmers slipping into the water. “The claims here don’t say ‘about 180 degrees,’” O’Quinn told the court. “The use of ordinary numbers does not suggest an approximation.”

The Federal Circuit agreed with O’Quinn and Brunswick in Cobalt Boats v. Brunswick. “Where a precise value is included in the claim without a term such as ‘about,’ we interpret the claim language as imposing a strict numerical boundary, absent evidence that such a construction would be inconsistent with the intrinsic evidence,” Judge Timothy Dyk wrote for a unanimous panel. Judges Jimmie Reyna and Evan Wallach concurred."
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That cartoon is SO I indicative of our crazy PC world today! Thanks for sharing A7!

[jhnmdahl]

Legally this is the right decision. Cobalt put a firm number in the claims, and did so not during original claim drafting but during prosecution to distinguish from art, meaning they also give up any equivalents under the Doctrine of Equivalents. There are other ways to get around the issued claims without much effort too, but I hate to spoon feed them to competition here.

John