The Acushnet/Callaway legal battle over multilayer golf ball technology that dates back to 2006 just got a little more interesting.
On Nov. 10, 2008, Callaway Golf was granted its request for a permanent injunction to stop sales of Acushnet’s Titleist Pro V1 family of golf balls, effective no later than January 1, 2009. The Court also rejected Acushnet’s request to overturn the jury’s December 2007 verdict which found that Callaway Golf’s golf ball patents were valid and infringed by Acushnet’s Titleist Pro V1 family of golf balls.
That has now changed.
According to Acushnet and news reports, a federal appeals court Friday threw out the jury verdict and ordered a new trial on the patent infringement case brought by Callaway and rescinded the injunction.
Callaway had claimed that the technology used in some of Titleist's golf balls, including the Pro V1 and Pro V1x, infringed its patents. A point Titleist has long disputed.
On January 17, 2006, Acushnet, of Titleist is a component, asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine each of the four asserted patents. “We firmly believe in respecting the valid intellectual property of everyone competing in the golf industry,” Acushnet said in a prepared statement at the time. “However, we have a very strong belief that these patents are invalid.”
The intellectual property in question, referred to in the complaint as "the Sullivan patents," focuses primarily on the construction of a multilayer ball with a solid core and a polyurethane cover. Acushnet says it received its first patent covering this technology on March 3, 1999 while the oldest of the four Callaway patents at issue was not filed until December 12, 1999 and issued on March 15, 2001. The other three patents were filed in 2001. The Callaway patents were acquired in 2003 when the company purchased Top-Flite Golf from bankruptcy. The Pro V1 was introduced at the Invensys Classic on October 12, 2000.
A Dow Jones Newswire story said, "The appeals court said there were genuine issues of fact that needed to be reconsidered by the trial judge in the case. The Federal Circuit also said the jury's verdicts on the Callaway patents were "irreconcilably inconsistent" because jurors found some patents invalid but concluded that other similar patents were valid."
Joe Nauman, executive vice president -- corporate and legal, Acushnet Company, said, "The appeals court ruling is very good news and supports our position that the patents in question are invalid. In addition, we continue to receive favorable rulings from the Patent & Trademark Office that all of these patents are invalid. Today’s appeals court ruling and the continuing
favorable Patent Office rulings reinforce our confidence that we will ultimately prevail in this matter."
Callaway said it had just received the opinion and were in the process of reviewing it.
Stay tuned.
-- E. Michael Johnson
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