Peloton Interactive Inc., New York, is suing Echelon Fitness Multimedia LLC, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and iFit Inc., Logan, Utah, alleging the companies violated its patents on remote workout technology, according to two separate lawsuits filed on Nov. 12 in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.
The lawsuit against Echelon alleges that Echelon has infringed upon Peloton’s U.S. Patent No. 11,170,886, which covers technology that uses sensors to measure a rider’s performance and display it on a leaderboard comparing the performance of all riders.
Peloton claims that Echelon has attempted to “free ride” off Peloton’s technology with its Smart Connect line of bikes, its Stride and Stride-5s treadmills, and its Row, Row-s, and Row-7s rowers. It allegedly does so by “operating servers that connect a plurality of exercise devices, allowing users to participate in on-demand exercise classes, the servers collecting a remote user’s performance parameters, and synchronizing that remote user’s performance against the performance of other remote users participating in a live session of an on-demand exercise class,” according to the lawsuit.
The other claim is that Echelon infringes on Peloton’s patent by imitating the Peloton Bike experience through the Echelon Fit App, which “detects, synchronizes, and compares the ride metrics of remote users on a graphical user interface.”
In the lawsuit filed against iFit, Peloton alleges that iFit, which owns Freemotion, also infringed on U.S. Patent No. 11,170,886 with its bikes, treadmills and ellipticals. Peloton alleges that iFit products never delivered live classes, only pre-recorded classes, and never offered a leaderboard until after Peloton did, announcing its leaderboard the month that Peloton went public.
Peloton also alleges iFit infringed on three other patents, two of which were patents on Precor equipment. Peloton bought Precor in December 2020.
The iFIT treadmill products with iFIT functionality allegedly infringe one of the other patents by “displaying treadmill class content to remote users that includes a segmented timeline indicating different class portions, tracking remote users’ performance throughout the different class segments, and displaying a comparison of the users’ performance alongside the segmented class timeline via a time-synced leaderboard that is updated as the class progresses.”
Peloton says that the alleged infringement has allowed iFIT Inc. to profit off Peloton, noting a Wall Street Journal article from March 2020 in which iFIT Inc.’s CEO said its sales had increased more than 200 percent and a May 2020 New York Times article in which iFIT’s president said the company was experiencing sales that were “absolutely bigger than any other boom time we’ve had.”
Peloton alleges that iFIT’s ActivePulse and SmartAdjust features for products with iFIT functionality infringe another patent by “receiving a user’s selected workout program and goals, detecting workout metrics of the remote user, and adjusting subsequent workouts of the user based on the detected metrics, and the user’s profile data and workout program.”
The other claim relates to certain iFIT treadmill products that Peloton alleges include “an air dam component that extends generally a majority length of the roller and substantially isolates the motor compartment from the endless belt, thereby substantially reducing airflow and cross-contamination of debris between the endless belt and the motor compartment.”
Peloton has asked for awards in damages, costs, expenses, and pre-judgment and post-judgment interest as well as a block on the sale of the Echelon and iFit equipment until the Peloton patents expire.
Echelon Fitness and iFit declined to comment on the lawsuits.