Overview
(September 19, 2022, Akron, OH) Steptoe secured a nearly $65 million jury verdict for inventor František Hrabal and his company Coda Development s.r.o. (Coda) against Goodyear Rubber and Tire Company (Goodyear) in the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in the "Rubber Capital of the World" and Goodyear’s hometown of Akron. After a seven-year battle, a panel of nine jurors found that Goodyear misappropriated several of Coda’s trade secrets involving self-inflating tire technology under the Ohio Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
The jury found that Goodyear willfully and maliciously misappropriated Coda’s trade secrets after Coda disclosed them to Goodyear engineers pursuant to a non-disclosure agreement. Coda argued that instead of partnering with it, Goodyear claimed Coda's inventions as their own, filed for and received patents, obtained government grants for research and development, and launched their own "Air Maintenance Technology" self-inflating tire program. Coda argued that Goodyear's actions destroyed Coda’s trade secrets and interfered with Coda’s ability to bring its self-inflating tire to market and generate revenue through licensing deals with Goodyear or other tire manufacturing partners.
The misappropriated trade secrets include the optimal location for tire manufacturers to place a tube in a groove in a tire sidewall to achieve pressures capable of inflating a commercial truck tire relying only on peristaltic pumping forces generated by the tire rolling on the road, solutions for managing air pressure in bi-directional configurations, and solutions for connecting the tube through an interface in the tire air chamber, among others.
The Steptoe trial team was led by partner Boyd T. Cloern, and included partners Stacie R. Hartman, Leah M. Quadrino and Dwight J. Draughon, Jr., as well as associates Scott M. Richey and Joseph F. Ecker, our paralegals Jennifer Fryer and Brandon Hernandez, and executive assistant Sheila Saxon. Partners Katherine D. Cappaert, John Caracappa, Jay Nuttal, Jeremy S. Goldkind, Alice E. Loughran, and associate Candice J. Kwark also contributed to the case in its earlier iterations.
Steptoe continues its fight for Mr. Hrabal and Coda in an upcoming bench trial to correct the inventorship of patents obtained by Goodyear.
About Steptoe
In more than 100 years of practice, Steptoe has earned an international reputation for vigorous representation of clients before governmental agencies, successful advocacy in litigation and arbitration, and creative and practical advice in structuring business transactions. Steptoe has more than 500 lawyers and other professional staff across offices in Beijing, Brussels, Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington. For more information, visit www.steptoe.com.
The diversity of the firm is a critical factor in its success. The firm's Chair is a woman; the majority of Steptoe's nine offices are managed by women; the majority of Steptoe’s practice groups have women as leaders; and the firm’s twelve-person elected compensation committee is headed by a woman and includes five women as members. The firm's business services leadership is equally diverse, with half the c-suite made up of women, including three women of color, and other leaders who openly identify as LGBTQ+.
