A US Federal Appeals Court has found (foolishly named) hoverboard-maker Swagway liable for trademark infringement. The court has affirmed an earlier ruling against Swagway handed down by the US International Trade Commission. Swagway had appealed the ITC finding against it, but has failed to prevail and has now racked up two losses in the courts. The company now sells its products under the SwagTron brand. According to the article linked above: "The fundamental question in trademark infringement cases is whether “consumers would likely confuse the alleged infringer’s mark with the asserted mark.” Likelihood of confusion is typically proven based upon a set of factors known as the DuPont factors.... courts are now applying the same factors in infringement cases." We first wrote about this case in April 2016 in our article Major US scooter maker Razor and "Swagway" hit by Segway lawsuits, saying:

Foolishly named Swagway is a maker of self-balancing hoverboards, and was hit by a trademark claim in January 2016. The name ‘Swagway’ bears an obvious and confusing similarity to the ‘Segway’ trademark. Did Swagway honestly think it could get away with trading under that name for long?

It gets worse for Swagway. In a big win for Segway, last month the US International Trade Commission determined that all China-built hoverboards infringe Segway patents and has banned all imports of hoverboards into USA.

By 2016 time Razor was already suing Swagway for patent infringement, after Razor had licensed a hoverboard patent first issued to Inventist founder Shane Chen. Concurrent to taking action against Swagway, Segway also sued Razor - challenging the validity of the Inventist patent by claiming 'prior art' existed in its own original Segway Human Transport patents. Segway released a public statement to media saying: “In September, we filed a lawsuit against Inventist for patent infringement. This latest filing is a continuation of our commitment to vigorously protect our brand and products,” said Brian Buccella, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. “There is a tremendous amount of confusion in the market. Consumers are under the impression that the self-balancing products that have recently flooded the market and have received negative media coverage are manufactured and sold by Segway. Our brand’s renowned reputation for quality and safety must be protected.”