Dyson drops design patent dispute with SharkNinja

Vacuum maker Dyson dismissed an appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit earlier this week, bringing a four-year design patent battle with competitor SharkNinja to an end.

Back in February 2014, Dyson claimed at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that SharkNinja was infringing three design patents (US numbers D577,163; D668,010; and D668,823) through the sale of stick vacuums (Shark Rockets).

“Over the next four-plus years, the parties battled over non-infringement, claim construction, invalidity, and inventorship issues through more than 500 docket entries and three rounds of expert discovery,” said Jones Day, the law firm that represented SharkNinja in the dispute.

In March this year, Judge Robert Dow granted SharkNinja’s third motion for summary judgment of non-infringement of the three patents.

Shark had argued that its designs were “plainly dissimilar” from Dyson’s asserted patents, a contention that Dow agreed with.

“Overall, the Shark Rockets have streamlined shapes with flowing contours that create an aerodynamic look … By contrast, the Dyson design uses regular geometric shapes—like rectangles, circles, and tubes—and perpendicular lines that create a more industrial, machine-like look with distinct component parts,” said Dow.

The following month, Dyson filed a notice of appeal against the decision to the Federal Circuit, but on Monday, July 30, Dyson submitted its motion to voluntarily dismiss the appeal.

Yesterday, August 1, the Federal Circuit granted the motion to dismiss, ordering each party to bear their own costs.

This isn’t the only clash between the competitors—in June, WIPR reported that a jury had awarded Dyson $16.4 million in damages in a false advertising case against SharkNinja.

After a ten-day trial, the jury found that SharkNinja had falsely advertised its product as better than Dyson’s vacuum, which Dyson had claimed was its best-performing product on the market.