Peloton has cleared more litigation from its plate with the settlement of all lawsuits between it and Echelon Fitness. However, Peloton faces a new lawsuit from Johnson Health Tech.
In the lawsuit filed by Johnson Health Tech (JHT) in October, JHT alleges that Peloton’s Tread and Tread+ treadmills use technology that infringes upon three of JHT’s patents related to motors used in the products and sensors that detect user engagement as well as a removable operating unit, a controller connected to the unit and other devices.
JHT owns Matrix Fitness, Vision Fitness, Horizon Fitness and other brands.
Other Litigation Settlements
Despite this new lawsuit, Peloton has been settling other litigation as CEO Barry McCarthy faces shareholder pressure to turn around the company after revenue and stock value have fallen since gyms and studios began to reopen.
The latest settlement involved Echelon Fitness. On Nov. 8, the two companies shared in a joint statement that all pending actions between Peloton and Echelon will be dismissed, and Echelon has agreed to cease using Peloton’s patented leaderboard technology in on-demand classes. The companies stated they will not release further details.
Echelon sells at-home bikes, treadmills, rowers, just as Peloton does, and it also sells fitness mirrors
The settlement stems from a lawsuit that Peloton filed against Echelon Fitness in 2019 in which Peloton alleged that Echelon was infringing on its patents. It filed a second lawsuit in 2021 alleging Echelon infringed on its patent that covers technology that uses sensors to measure a rider’s performance and display it on a leaderboard comparing the performance of all riders
At that time, Peloton claimed that Echelon was attempting 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 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 was that Echelon infringed 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 May, Peloton settled all pending litigation with iFit, which it had sued in 2020 and 2021 alleging patent infringement related to Peloton’s leaderboard technology.
iFIT (which manufactures fitness brands Freemotion, NordicTrack, ProForm, Sweat, Weider and 29029) then sued Peloton in 2021 and 2022 alleging Peloton’s Bike+ infringed on iFIT’s patent related to users being able to alternate between biking and weightlifting.
As a result of the settlement between iFit and Peloton, iFIT agreed to remove certain on-demand leaderboard technology from its products, and Peloton agreed to license certain iFIT patents relating to remote control technology.
In September, Peloton settled litigation with Lululemon Athletica Inc. In that lawsuit, Lululemon alleged that when Peloton ended its co-branding relationship with Lululemon and launched a private-label apparel brand in September 2021, Peloton infringed on six patents related to some of Lululemon’s bras and leggings. In the settlement, Peloton agreed it would phase out certain apparel designs in question.
(Correction: The original version of this article mistakenly noted that JHT owns Hoist and Octane. Octane is owned by True Fitness, not JHT. We apologize for the error.)