A Florida entrepreneur has taken sportswear brand Nike to court alleging the company stole her design patents.
SherryWear founder Sherry Goff said she first pitched her patented ‘Pocket Bra’ design to the brand’s Nike Idea Submission platform in 2015.
The Pocket Bra is a sports bra with built-in pockets permitting women to keep their “most precious possessions close, convenient and safe in a comfortable fashionable manner”.
Since Nike did not respond to Goff’s outreach, she once again pitched her idea to several top-level Nike executives on LinkedIn in 2017.
However, months later, Nike filed a US patent application for a “Bra With Storage Pockets” with the alleged-infringing product marketed to retailers by 2019.
The infringing product here includes a sports bra with pockets titled ‘Swoosh On The Run’ which was introduced last year.
Though Goff alerted Nike regarding the alleged infringing items in January 2019, Nike never responded to her prompts.
In the lawsuit, SherryWear said: “Counsel advised Nike that SherryWear would take further steps to protect its intellectual property rights against Nike if Nike failed to respond to the letter by July 10, 2023.”
The company is seeking “injunctive relief” to prevent Nike from continuing to infringe on the Pocket Bra patents while also expecting monetary damages from past and ongoing infringement of patents.
