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Chinese company gets a visit from US marshals at CES 2016 over patent violation

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 8 Jan 2016, 5:00pm

Chinese company gets a visit from US marshals at CES 2016 over patent violation

 The offending product being sold by Changzhou First International Trade.

Electric scooters are strangely gaining popularity. Erroneously called hoverboards by some people, the scooters have seen their popularity rise over the recent months, despite reports and complains regarding the devices catching fire. It seems that being a part of the fad is much more important that personal safety to some. But we digress, fad or not, the scooters are undoubtedly popular.

Due to that, it's no wonder that CES 2016 saw a few products in the family being displayed by various companies. One company though, Changzhou First International Trade, got in hot soup for allegedly violating a design patent and had their product removed from the CES floor.

We're not lawyers, but even we can see the incredible similarities between the Onewheel (the original) and the Surfing Electric Scooter.

The Onewheel, the scooter on the left and in blue, was the original. It was designed by Kyle Doerksen, who works for Future Motion, a Silicon Valley startup. The Onewheel costs US$1,499 while the Changzhou's scooters cost about US$500 each.

Doerksen created the Onewheel, showed it off at CES 2014 and was able to successfully raise US$630,000 via a Kickstarter campaign to fund the scooter. Doerksen and the company he works for, Future Motion, alleges that Changzhou First International Trade clearly ripped off their product.

Looking at the images of the two scooters side by side, it seems like Future Motion isn't just blowing hot air, and a US judge agreed that there were some design shenanigan going on, and issued a court order to remove the alleged copycats. That of course led the US marshals to serve the order directly to the employees of Changzhou First International Trade at the CES show floor, who had to remove everything related to the scooter from their booth, leaving it bare in the end.

According to reports, Changzhou First International Trade was repeatedly warned by Future Motion's legal team. In December, Future Motion's lawyer sent a letter to the Chinese company, ordering them to stop selling the products on Alibaba.com, which Changzhou First International Trade ignored. Then, this past Wednesday, the legal team tried again during the show, getting nowhere once again. This of course, led the company to filing the request with the judge on the grounds of design patent infringement, alleging the Chinese company ripped off Future Motion's Onewheel design.

While Future Motion may have won the battle, the war is still yet to be determined as Changzhou First International Trade had reportedly sold US$70,000 worth of the products already.

Source: Bloomberg

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