Goodyear wins reversal of $64 million loss in tire trade-secret case

By Blake Brittain

(Reuters) -Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co convinced an Ohio federal judge on Friday to throw out a $64 million jury verdict over its alleged theft of trade secrets related to self-inflating tires.

U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi said most of the trade secrets that Czech company Coda Development SRO accused Goodyear of stealing were too vague to be legally protected.

A spokesperson for Goodyear said Monday that the company agrees with the decision and “respects the intellectual property rights of others.” Attorneys for Coda did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Coda sued Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear in 2015, and said in an amended 2019 complaint that Goodyear copied Coda CEO Frantisek Hrabal’s technology to keep tires inflated with an internal tube, after discussing a potential collaboration in 2009 for General Motors Co (NYSE:)’s Chevy Volt.

A jury decided last year that Goodyear misappropriated five of the 12 trade secrets Coda accused it of misusing. It awarded Coda $2.8 million in compensatory damages and $61.2 million in punitive damages for Goodyear’s “willful and malicious” behavior.

But Lioi said Friday that four of the five secrets – related to Coda’s design, development and placement of self-inflating tire pumps – were not specific enough to be considered protectable trade secrets.

Lioi said Coda’s fifth alleged secret, related to developing a functional self-inflating tire, was “no secret at all” because the concept was not new in 2009.

The case is Coda Development SRO v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, No. 5:15-cv-01572.