Adidas Losing PUMA Case Of Infringing Boost Intellectual Property Rights

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Lawsuit

NRGY's case of infringing Boost intellectual property has finally been settled. The local court in Dusseldorf, Germany, has decided that the infringement is not valid. PUMA can continue to sell its own NRGY technology.

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Adidas's lawsuit is not groundless. It is NRGY and Boost Boost that have quite close ties.

As we all know, running shoes can be roughly divided into two categories: structural cushioning and material damping.

The former creates a "bow" structure (such as MIZUNO's WAVE Technology), which absorbs the pressure from the ground, while the latter uses special elastic materials to create a midsole to achieve the goal (such as ASICs's GEL Technology).

The controversy over intellectual property rights between Adidas and PUMA is a new elastic material developed by BASF, Germany.

Adidas Ultra Boost equipped with Boost midsole

Puma Ignite Nrgy V2 equipped with NRGY midsole

As the largest chemical company in Germany and the world, BASF has developed many new materials.

The two used in running shoes are materials called foaming microspheres (Infinergy), which make ordinary TPU materials foaming, and each size 5mm TPU particles expand to 10 times the size of popcorn as popcorn.

These materials, made of expanded TPU pellets, are more elastic, lighter, more cushioning and more durable than traditional mid sole material EVA.

These characteristics make Infinergy suitable for the sole material of running shoes.

As a long-term partner, BASF's new material naturally attracted the attention of PUMA, a German company, and began to cooperate with BASF in Adidas to start running Infinergy shoes into running shoes.

This naturally escaped the attention of Adidas, who signed an exclusive patent cooperation agreement with BASF in 2011, and eventually released Boost technology.

Half of the research and development PUMA had to take the lead to cooperate with Huntsman, the largest private chemical company in the world, to develop the mid sole material made of foamed thermoplastic polyurethane (E-TPU), and launched its own NRGY mitigation technology in 2014.

Since then, adidas has been on PUMA NRGY, making many running shoes with NRGY technology postponed.

From today's perspective, Boost has become a business card of Adidas.

Adidas has developed a complete running shoe product line from low to high around Boost, and has extended Boost technology to basketball and other fields (Boost, Boost, ASICs and GEL). The success of the "best running shoes" Adidas Ultra Boost has been favored by countless tide makers.

Adidas also succeeded in using Boost to make its own running shoes make a contribution to beautiful financial reports.

Although there are never many PUMA running shoes equipped with NRGY mitigation technology, it seems that there is a certain gap in the performance of the "NRGY" on the top of the NRGY, but the lower price and the iteration and update of the products after the mass market will obviously make PUMA NRGY catch up with Adidas Boost very quickly.

Although Adidas said that she will continue to appeal, PUMA's body size is completely different from that of Adidas, but it is foreseeable that the "popcorn" midsole will no longer be displayed in the face of Adidas technology.

More price, more choices, that's what we want to see.