News briefs – Page 25
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News briefs
UA to pay $9m in fines for misreported revenues
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is levying $9.0 million in fines on Under Armour for “misleading investors as to the bases of its revenue growth and failing to disclose known uncertainties concerning its future revenue prospects.” The misdeeds occurred over a year and a half, from the third ...
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News briefs
Russia postpones to June 15 deadline to sell untagged shoes
The Russian government has once again pushed back the deadline for retailers to sell their remaining inventories of untagged footwear to avoid counterfeits. The new date is June 15. Labelling shoes with special electronic tags became mandatory in Russia on June 1, 2020. As of April this year, 82,000 companies ...
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News briefs
Columbia sues Wuxly over its heat-reflective design patent
Columbia Sportswear is suing Wuxly, an outerwear company registered in Canada, for allegedly infringing a design patent covering its heat-reflective material. The lawsuit (U.S. number 655,921) was filed on April 27. According to the plaintiff, Wuxly’s Sabertooth line of jackets uses lightweight underlining that infringes on Columbia’s Omni-Heat reflective material. ...
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News briefs
BSI tells the German government that sport can help defeat Covid
The German Sporting Goods Industry Association (BSI) has called on the German federal government in an open letter to recognize the relevance of sport as an “effective corona (virus) prevention” and to use “sport as part of the solution for coping with pandemics.” Sport is important for physical and mental ...
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News briefs
English soccer to boycott social media over “abuse”
Various British football associations will be boycotting the social media networks for the U.K.’s bank holiday from April 30 to May 3. The reason, as their common statement reads, is the “ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse received online by players and many others connected to football.” The announcement was made ...
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News briefs
Sports Direct is ordered to pay back rent
The U.K.’s High Court has ordered Frasers Group, the parent of Sports Direct and many other companies, to pay rent arrears to the landlords of one of its stores, which has been forced to stay closed for several weeks because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The judge supported the claims of ...
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News briefs
Afydad launches online marketplace
Afydad, the Spanish association of sporting goods manufacturers and retailers, has launched a new website, www.spainissport.com, to serve as an omnichannel B2C marketplace and B2B showroom. The marketplace is now operational, can take orders from final customers and can “geolocate” for them the nearest distributor or retailer of a given ...
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News briefs
German retail lockdown measures set through June 30
German legislation that imposes new limits on the opening of schools and non-essential retail stores, including sports shops, passed the Senate on Thursday, April 22. Already approved by the lower house of the German Parliament, the bill became law on Friday after being signed by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Stretching ...
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News briefs
German Parliament sets limits for Click & Meet and Click & Collect
The lower chamber of the German Parliament has decided to raise the minimum permissible level for the non-essential retailers’ Click & Meet services (visiting the stores by appointment only) for areas of the country where 150 out of 100,000 residents are found to be contaminated by Covid-19. If the level ...
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News briefs
Peloton says its Tread+ treadmill is safe
Peloton has issued a statement to refute the claims by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) about the safety of the Peloton Tread+ treadmill following a series of incidents with the equipment. A child died in March while using the Tread+, as previously reported by SGI Europe. Peloton said ...
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News briefs
Bleyer files for insolvency
Bleyer, a German producer of sports shoes for special activities, has filed for temporary insolvency because of cash problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The company, which employs 21 people, and its web store will continue to operate like before, hoping that the current restrictions on sports and dance events ...
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News briefs
Dish sues Peloton, Lululemon and Icon Health & Fitness over streaming technology
Connected fitness remains a hot issue in terms of intellectual property rights. Dish Network Corp. and its Sling TV division are suing Peloton Interactive, Lululemon Athletica and Icon Health & Fitness for allegedly infringing five patents for technology that improves the quality of video content on the internet through multi-bitrate ...
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News briefs
Puma reportedly agrees not to use the Tokyo 2020 mark
Puma has reportedly settled a dispute with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), which claims to own trademarks for the Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022 and Paris 2024 labels, with the right to use them for licensing and sponsorship agreements. The committee and Team USA had filed a suit against ...
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News briefs
Fitbit and Garmin are cleared of two out of four patent infringement charges
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has confirmed that Garmin and Fitbit are not infringing on two patents registered by Philips, concluding that they are invalid, but it did not overturn two other patents over which the Dutch electronics company is still in litigation with the two suppliers of wearables. ...
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News briefs
FESI launches new Covid-19 survey
FESI has launched a third survey to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sporting goods industry. It is open to any sporting goods company operating in Europe, with a tentative deadline of April 28 for the replies. A specific section is devoted to winter sports. FESI’s previous ...
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News briefs
Alibaba settles with Chinese anti-trust authorities
The Alibaba Group has agreed to make it easier for merchants to do business with it, without preventing them from using other platforms, as part of a series of ”comprehensive rectifications” demanded by Chinese anti-trust regulators, which charged it of abusing its dominant market position. It will nevertheless have to ...
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News briefs
Patent office finds Timberland’s iconic boot design too generic
The U.S. Patent Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board denied a bid by VF Corp. to register the design of Timberland’s iconic Yellow Boot, concluding that it lacks sufficient acquired distinctiveness. The board noted that there was no evidence that competitors were trying to intentionally copy the boot’s trade dress, ...
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News briefs
Icon sues Peloton once more
Icon Health & Fitness has filed its fourth suit against Peloton Interactive in the U.S. federal court in Delaware, where two other suits filed last year are still pending. This time, Icon is attacking the Auto Follow feature of Peloton’s new Bike+ model, which automatically adjusts its resistance to match ...
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News briefs
Nike obtains a recall of MSCHF’s Jesus Shoes and “Satan Shoes”
Nike said that the MSCHF Product Studio has agreed to voluntarily recall the “Satan Shoes” it has developed with a rapper as well as the Jesus Shoes it had launched in 2019 as part of a legal settlement. Both shoe models were unauthorized alterations of Nike’s Air Max 97. According ...
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News briefs
U.S. boycott of Beijing Olympics still up in the air
It remains unclear whether the U.S. will boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, either alone or in a coalition with other countries. Last month the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, outlined the reasons, saying: “China uses coercion and aggression to systematically erode autonomy in Hong Kong, undercut democracy ...
