Even in the camera bag game, there are patent infringement lawsuits. Gura Gear sued Peak Design in September of 2015 for an element of the Peak Design Everyday Messenger, a hugely successful Kickstarter camera bag campaign backed by Trey Ratcliff. It looks like the infrindging patent came from Gura Gear's acquisition of Tamrac's assets, including intellectual property.

The Complaint:

A container for facilitating rapid access to the interior of the container to remove articles from the container, comprising: a. a generally rectangular body having a base, two end walls and two sidewalls respectively interconnected at their adjacent edges to adjacent edges of the two end walls, the walls extending upwardly from the base to form the body with a top opening; b. a side closure flap attached to a respective one of said two sidewalls and secured against the respective one of said two sidewalls by fastener means, the side closure flap adapted to span over and covering said top opening of said body and forming a top when the side closure flap is in a closed position; and c. said top of said side closure flap having full length double zipper means for opening or closing said top to gain access to the interior of said body; d. whereby the interior of said body of said container is accessed by either flipping over said side closure flap to an open position or unzipping said double zipper means on said top of said body to access the interior through said top opening of said body of said container.

It looks like the suit was settled pretty quickly, at just over a month. With Gura Gear voluntarily dismissing the case, I'm going to assume they won, but it doesn't say how much of that Kickstarter money was sent over the Tamrac/Gura Gear.

However, with the product still available for preorder on Kickstarter, I imagine Peak Design is licensing the infringing Gura Gear/Tamrac design for the Everyday Messenger.

Aren't patents fun?

You can view the public records of the suit here.

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