Peloton is triumphant in lawsuit, keeps Bike+ name

Back in May of 2021, World Champ Tech LLC filed a lawsuit against Peloton, claiming that the connected fitness company infringed on a trademark that the company owned – the name being “Bike+”. Head below for more details.

According to Pelo Buddy, World Champ Tech LLC created an iPhone app called “Bike+”. The app was made to “allow users detect, record, store, analyze, and share data from their indoor or outdoor cycling sessions.” World Champ Tech LLC had filed a trademark on the name Bike+ as a part of their app release.

Both Peloton and World Champ Tech LLC filed for summary judgment in the case, and just this week, the judge granted Peloton summary judgment, meaning the lawsuit against Peloton was effectively over. As a part of the ruling, the judge said “there is no likelihood of confusion” between World Champ Tech LLC’s Bike+ app and Peloton Bike+, which is what lead to the ruling.

Additionally, the judge noted that even though both parties had experts indicating whether consumers may be confused by similar trademark names, there was no evidence submitted that provided real-life proof of confusion:

Although the parties offered competing expert surveys on whether consumers would be confused and the parties dispute (essentially) the weight those reports should be given, it is undisputed that no evidence of actual confusion has been offered. Given that the parties’ products have coexisted in the marketplace since September 2020, the lack of evidence of actual confusion weighs in the defendant’s favor at the summary-judgment stage.

As a part of the deposition with Tom Cortese, Peloton cofounder and former chief product officer, Peloton stated that the + at the end of “Bike” was to denote a premium product, and Peloton also noted that other companies do the same.

The defendant “chose to append a ‘+’ to ‘Bike’ because it is a simple term that consumers understand to signify a product line extension with added features. Numerous leading brands, such as Apple (Apple TV+) and Disney (Disney+), had already adopted ‘+’ for their line expansions.” Thus, the plus sign “can easily be implemented across product lines to indicate a ‘better/best’ product array.”

At the end of the ruling, the judge in the court case said of the Bike+ app:

By the time of the defendant’s September 2020 Bike+ product launch, the plaintiff’s Bike+ app was mostly dormant, having gone through an extended update process that finished after September 2020. The last meaningful marketing for the app was in 2019. Subscriber and download numbers were insubstantial and declining and a portion of them were for international consumers. The Pebble Watch portion of the userbase was a very niche group of consumers who, owing to their very specific search criteria, were unlikely to be confused. And crucially, the Bike+ mark is descriptive and is joined in the marketplace by equivalent app names and variants on that composite mark. Not surprisingly, despite several years of coexistence, no evidence of actual confusion was submitted.