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IPRs Offer Sports Companies a Defensive Play in Patent Lawsuits

Aaron Parker and Umber Aggarwal are attorneys at Finnegan LLP in Washington, DC. Christopher Anderson is an attorney at Finnegan LLP in Reston, Virginia.

As sports companies become increasingly associated with technology, they find themselves more susceptible to expensive and time-consuming patent infringement lawsuits. Those companies are turning to a petition called an Inter Partes Review to challenge the validity of patents.

When KneeBinding, an American company that specializes in safer-release ski bindings, sued Völkl, a German manufacturer of high-performance ski products, the German company filed an IPR in response.