Nike is facing a lawsuit in Boston Federal Court by an inventor who claims the sportswear giant stole her technology for a line of sports bras with pockets. In court papers, SherryWear, LLC said its founder, Sherry Goff, first pitched her patented Pocket Bra to Nike in 2015.
SherryWear, based in Vero Beach, FL, filed its first patent application on April 26, 2011. By early 2015, SherryWear had filed four patent applications, two of which were issued. The Pocket Bra, comprising built-in pockets, allows women to keep their “most precious possessions close, convenient and safe in a comfortable [and] fashionable manner,” according to court papers.
The initial pitch in 2015 by Sherry Goff to Nike, which included the then-issued and pending patents and photographs of a SherryWear pocket bra, was made through “Nike Idea Submission,” an online idea submission platform operated by Nike. Nike did not respond to Goff’s 2015 outreach.
In January 2017, Goff again tried to pitch her idea to Nike, contacting via LinkedIn several Nike executives, including Evan Reynolds, then head of Marketplace Strategic Investments; Rick Boyd, then Patent Footwear specialist; Nathan Plowman, then a senior director at Nike; and Hillary Krane, then general counsel for Nike.
On February 7, 2017, Krane forwarded Goff’s communications to Paul Saraceni, then VP of Global IP Transactions and Licensing at Nike. Also, on the same day, Saraceni asked Goff to send a “non-confidential list of IP assets that [SherryWear] had begun to market for sale.” Goff sent Saraceni a list of SherryWear’s then-issued and pending patents.
Between February and March of 2017, Saraceni and Goff communicated again by e-mail regarding the licensing or purchasing of SherryWear’s intellectual property.
On March 24, 2017, Saraceni e-mailed Goff stating that Nike “will respectfully pass on the opportunity.”
SherryWear’s lawsuit states that on May 17, 2017, fifty-five days after Saraceni’s last e-mail, Nike filed a U.S. patent application entitled “Bra With Storage Pockets.” By September 2017, Nike filed for a second patent on its “Bra With Storage Pockets” and the alleged-infringing product began reaching the retail marketplace by 2019.
SherryWear began alerting Nike of alleged infringing items in January 2019 and hired legal representation to contact Nike about the alleged infringing product beginning in January 2021. Nike reportedly never responded to letters Goff sent to the company that outlined the alleged infringement.
SherryWear said in the lawsuit, “On or about June 26, 2023, NIKE received a third letter, through the undersigned counsel, that the Infringing Products were infringing certain claims of the Pocket Bra Patents. 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. NIKE did not provide a substantive response addressing the points in the June 26 letter.”
SherryWear said the infringing product includes a sports bra with pockets titled “Swoosh On The Run,” which Nike introduced in 2022.
SherryWear is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Nike from continuing to infringe on the Pocket Bra patents. In addition, SherryWear seeks monetary damages resulting from Nike’s past and ongoing infringement of the Pocket Bra patents.
Photo courtesy Nike
