Nike has lost its bid to preserve a fitness technology patent challenged by Lululemon, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirming an earlier determination that all of the challenged claims are unpatentable. The court’s August 5 decision stems from a patent fight between two of the biggest names in the activewear market and reflects how competition among brands extends beyond branded sneakers and apparel to the tech that underpins modern fitness.
At the center of the case is a Nike-owned utility patent (No. 8,620,413) that covers technology for monitoring and guiding exercise. The patent – which was issued to Nike in 2013 – describes a watch or other portable electronic console that can connect to remote devices, such as performance sensors, and display information related to them. Critically, the patent includes claims covering technology that uses heart-rate measurements and information about a user’s fitness to establish target heart-rate zones and guide exercise accordingly.
Lululemon Takes Aim at Nike’s Patent
The dispute stems from a broader patent infringement lawsuit that Nike filed against Lululemon in 2022 over its Mirror Home Gym and related products. Nike accused Lululemon of infringing six patents, including the ’413 patent at issue here. Lululemon subsequently turned to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”), seeking inter partes review of all six patents. In January 2023, it challenged 13 of the ’413 patent’s 19 claims.
The PTAB found all 13 challenged claims unpatentable in light of prior art, prompting Nike to appeal. The patent’s six remaining claims were not challenged in the proceeding and are unaffected by the ruling.
Siding with Lululemon, the Federal Circuit rejected Nike’s argument that the PTAB took an overly broad view of a requirement that the device prompt a user to exercise at successive exertion levels “based on a level of physical fitness of a user.” The court was particularly dismissive of Nike’s attempt to narrow that language, finding that its “linguistic gymnastics bear little relation to the [PTAB’s] actual analyses” and emphasizing the “broad phrasing” of the patent itself.
The broad wording ultimately made it harder for Nike to distinguish its claimed invention from the prior art – earlier technology that can be used to challenge the validity of patent claims. The prior art cited by Lululemon included technology that adjusted exercise intensity using a person’s stride length and weight. Nike argued that those characteristics were not the same as a user’s “level of physical fitness,” but the Federal Circuit agreed with the PTAB that they could be considered in assessing a user’s fitness level, helping to support the Board’s finding that the claim was anticipated by the prior art.
With the Federal Circuit affirming the PTAB’s finding that the 13 challenged claims are unpatentable, those claims are set to be canceled, while the six claims that were not part of Lululemon’s challenge remain intact.
THE BIGGER PICTURE: Nike and Lululemon may be best known for athleticwear, but the broader fitness market has come to encompass wearables, sensors, connected devices, training platforms, and the data generated by them as tech takes on a bigger role in how consumers exercise and track their fitness. That expansion has pushed intellectual property battles beyond the trademarks and designs traditionally associated with apparel and footwear and into the functionality underlying a growing roster of tech-enabled products.
While the Federal Circuit designated its decision nonprecedential, the dispute nonetheless offers a snapshot of how the growing overlap between fitness and technology is expanding the areas in which brands compete – and seek exclusive rights. It also shows the difficulty of carving out broad exclusive rights as fitness technology continues to become a more crowded space. The broader the scope of the claims, the greater the chance that existing technology already occupies some of it.
The case is Nike, Inc. v. Lululemon Athletica Canada Inc., 2024-2134 (Fed. Cir.).
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