The pyramidal-backbone of the ProCross chassis and the positioning of the rider on ProCross machines is at the heart of the lawsuit filed today by Bombardier Recreational Products against Arctic Cat, according to a BRP official who spoke with Snow Goer magazine this afternoon.
Pierre Pichette, vice president of public affairs and communication for BRP, said the design of Arctic Cat’s new chassis is a copy of the REV’s rider forward concept. “BRP makes a lot of effort and investment in innovation,” Pichette said. “This time around, we needed to take this kind of action.” BRP contacted Arctic Cat this morning and made the company aware of its lawsuit, Pichette said.
Snow Goer reached out to Arctic Cat officials seeking comment but were directed to the company’s public relations firm.
Ski-Doo launched the REV chassis in 2002 as a 2003 model, a machine that Pichette said was a paradigm shift for snowmobiles and won the 2004 Snow Goer Snowmobile of the Year award. “Until the REV in 2003, architecture was the same for everybody since the beginning,” he said. The rider-forward platform catapulted Ski-Doo to the number one position in snowmobile market share.
Could more lawsuits be coming down the pipeline from BRP? When asked to comment about “borrowed” technologies seen across other makes of snowmobiles, Pichette said, “We have only concentrated on Arctic Cat at the moment.”
The lawsuit, filed in Illinois against Arctic Cat and a dealer who sells Arctic Cat snowmobiles, specifically targets the 2012 ProCross F 800, but add the langauge “including but not limited to” whenever it is mentioned. The lawsuit lists four different patents that BRP says were Cat violated.
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