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.

An attorney for Coda said the company was disappointed with the decision and plans to appeal.

A spokesperson for Goodyear said Monday that the company agrees with the decision and “respects the intellectual property rights of others.”

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’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.

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington)