Last week, a US court rejected a jury’s decision that required the American company Goodyear Tire & Rubber to pay Czech inventor Frantisek Hrabal and his company Coda Development $64 million for alleged theft of trade secrets related to self-inflating tires. According to their legal representative, Coda plans to appeal the court’s verdict.
This information comes from a report by Reuters.
According to last year’s jury decision, Goodyear had appropriated five of Coda’s trade secrets. However, the court has now concluded that four of these secrets were not sufficiently specific to obtain legal protection, and the fifth was not a secret at all.
Coda filed a lawsuit against Goodyear in 2015, claiming that Hrabal met with Goodyear employees in January and June 2009 to discuss the possibility of collaboration and implementation of his ideas into production. The American tire manufacturer signed a confidentiality agreement, stipulating that it could only use the knowledge gained by its employees if a partnership with the Czech company was established. However, this partnership never materialized.
In the following years, Goodyear began developing its own system, which bore a striking resemblance to the Czech invention. The self-inflating tire technology ensures automatic inflation of tires containing a miniature pump. The system is powered by energy generated by the rotating wheel, eliminating the need for drivers to check tire pressure.
