Two U.S. federal marshals showed up at the Consumer Electronics Show this Thursday to conduct a raid against one of the show’s exhibitors whose product, a hoverboard, bore striking similarities to a patented hoverboard concept that was also on display at the show.
According to Bloomberg Business, the CES booth for Changzhou First International Trade Co. was showing off its own take on the hoverboard, called the Trotter. While recent examples of hoverboard have the wheels on either side of the board, the Trotter operates with one giant wheel beneath the center of the board.
At CES, the world’s largest annual gadget and technology conference, it is not uncommon to find different companies displaying and promoting similar products. However, Future Motion, a Silicon Valley start up whose focus is a hoverboard which operates with a single wheel in the middle like the Trotter, believed Changzhou’s hoverboard to be in breach of one of their patents.
The U.S. marshals, accompanied by members of Future Motion’s legal team, served the Changzou First International Trade Co. CES booth with a court order, according to U.S. Marshals official Lynzey Donahue.
Future Motion’s patent prohibits competitors from making anything that an ordinary observer might confuse with the company’s own design, entitled the Onewheel. Like the Trotter, the Onewheel is a hoverboard which, rather than utilizing wheels on either side, glides on a single wheel which sits in the middle of the board, making it look like a seesaw.
“Would we have done this without the design patent being issued? The answer is we wouldn’t have bothered,” said Shawn Kolitch, a lawyer for Future Motion.