SharkNinja Confident That It Will Prevail in iRobot's Latest Patent Play

NEEDHAM, Mass., Jan. 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SharkNinja Operating LLC (SharkNinja), an innovation leader in the consumer floorcare industry, offers consumers high quality robotic vacuums at an extraordinary value.  This week, iRobot Corp. (iRobot) filed a complaint at the International Trade Commission (ITC) asking the ITC to exclude SharkNinja's ION Robot, IQ Robot and AI Robot vacuums from entering the United States based on allegations of patent infringement.

In 2019, iRobot filed a patent infringement case against SharkNinja in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts alleging infringement of six patents and seeking a preliminary injunction with respect to three of them.  The District Court denied iRobot's request for an injunction, and only three of the six patents now remain in the case.  In the meantime, The United States Patent Office (Patent Office) has instituted proceedings to re-assess the validity of those three patents, already having found that there is a "reasonable likelihood" that all of the claims iRobot asserted against SharkNinja in those patents are invalid. 

iRobot has now attacked SharkNinja's robotic vacuums in a different forum with different patents.  But SharkNinja believes that iRobot's new allegations also are unfounded.  SharkNinja takes intellectual property very seriously and takes active steps to avoid violations of any valid intellectual property rights of others.  SharkNinja intends to aggressively defend itself against iRobot's ill-founded claims of patent infringement and is confident that it will continue to prevail in these disputes  In fact, SharkNinja filed a request with the Patent Office in 2020 asking it to invalidate one of the patents only now being asserted by iRobot in the ITC case.  That proceeding is pending at the Patent Office.

SharkNinja remains committed to providing innovative robotic vacuums with advanced cleaning features to our consumers at incredible value. 

About SharkNinja

SharkNinja is an innovation leader in the housewares industry and creator of the familiar household brands Shark^® and Ninja^®. SharkNinja provides the latest in easy-to-use innovative technology with a growing line of solutions that consist of Shark cleaning and home care products and Ninja kitchen appliances. Products are sold at major retailers and through distributors around the world. Ninja and Shark are registered trademarks of SharkNinja Operating LLC .SharkNinja is a subsidiary of JS Global (HKEX: 1691 HK) a leader in small household appliance innovation.

For more information, contact Dan O'Shaughnessy, at [email protected] or visit sharkninja.com.

SOURCE SharkNinja