Snowboarding Equipment and Accessories
Burton Corporation, based in Vermont, the leading manufacturer of snowboard equipment, is credited with the popularization of snowboarding as a legitimate sport. The company traces its roots to the late 1970s when its founder, Jake Burton, began trying to figure out how to make and manufacture snowboards while working out of a barn in Vermont. He built his first production prototype in 1977, launching the snowboard sport and industry. Today, through several subsidiary companies, Burton has expanded to now offer boots, bindings, helmets, clothing, and accessories that it sells through dealers worldwide. The company holds patents around the world for its snowboard technology and associated products and has more than 60 registered trademarks in the U.S. and several other countries in Latin America and Asia.
Despite these precautions, Burton has encountered counterfeiting problems in the U.S. and in Asia. It characterizes the problem in the U.S. as small-scale manufacture and sale of its products on eBay, where it says unauthorized goods carrying the Burton brands, including products it manufactures in limited editions, can be found “almost continuously.”
The company has encountered a significant and increasing intellectual property theft problem in Asia, where it has found counterfeit versions of its clothing and accessories in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand. In testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Vanessa Price, Burton’s intellectual property specialist, said the company fully expects that the counterfeiting problem will increase dramatically as its brand continues to grow.
“As a smaller company, Burton is deeply concerned about the rise of theft of our intellectual property since we do not have the resources it takes to combat or offset the effects of large-scale counterfeiting,” she said in her testimony.
