BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Genuine Innovations has filed a lawsuit against Todson and Zefal, accusing both parties of infringing a patent on its inflation devices.
Patent owner Tony Hollars filed the suit, claiming that the two companies have marketed products which utilise the technology Genuine Innovations registered under patent number 6843388.
Genuine Innovations CEO, Marty Mares said: “We have, in the past, offered our manufacturing services to Todson and were in negotiation with Zefal in 2007 to license our inflator technology, so one can imagine our surprise and disappointment to find this item for sale in Wal-Mart.”
Todson is the company behind the Topeak brand name.
The violated Patent No. 6843388 was issued to Tony Hollars in early 2005. This particular patent is for a lower ‘multi cup’ that uses 12 gram non-threaded, 16 gram non-threaded, and 3/8 threaded cartridges.
The two products said to be in violation of the GI patent are the Zefal Co2 inflator and the Topeak One Timer.
