GoPro Has Been Sued By C&A Marketing Inc.

The action camera manufacturer has been sued by the Polaroid maker; yet to see what the court decides.

A patent infringement lawsuit has been filed against GoPro, manufacturer of action cameras. The lawsuit has been filed against GoPro by C&A Marketing Inc. the manufacturers of the Polaroid Cube. The action camera producer has accused of copying its cube shaped round edged camera. GoPro had released its Hero 4 Session in the summer which was not the best production by GoPro but regardless C&A Marketing claimed that it was a rip off of its Polaroid Cube. This lawsuit was filed by the company in the United States on Tuesday. The company had launched its Polaroid Cube last year. The company has sued GoPro to earn all the money that the manufacturing company has made from the sale of these cube cameras along with the damages. Many have commented on this issue saying that it seems like a desperate move by C&A Marketing Inc. In the company’s defense, it stated that it has been working on this ‘action camera’ for years and the company has even patents most of the functions and designs of the product. According to people who have used both the products, both these products are quite different from each other. In another statement C&A Marketing said that they have invested a good amount of money in the research and development of the Polaroid Camera and to come up with the unique product. Furthermore, it stated that their product has rounded edges, ‘a slightly recessed lens and a single button on top’ which are all the designs that can be found in GoPro’s Hero 4 Session. GoPro in response said in a statement that along with announcing the development of the Hero 4 Session before any of the competitors in the market had announced a similar product or even filed a patent, GoPro’s product does not infringe any competitor’s products design or features. Regardless of that statement, C&A Marketing Inc. has contacted the U.S District Court in Newark, New York to make the camera manufacturers to stop selling the Hero 4 Session. It is still uncertain as to what this would mean for the other cubed camera manufacturers in the market such as Fuhu and SJCam. These few companies are working on and selling similar products while on the other hand, another such product is about to release in the market by Canon. This new product is expected to be in the market in December. On a separate note, GoPro’s stock has decline by 2.21% and are currently being traded at a share price of $24.82 per share. Earnings per share reported the camera manufacturer is 1.20 with a price per earnings ratio of 20.64. The market capital of GoPro is 3.41 billion.

Bidness ETC - GoPro Hero 4 Price Likely To Drop

GoPro needs to drop the price of Hero 4 Silver to attract buyers.

GoPro Inc. despite being known for in the consumer industry as an action camera manufacturer seems to be stumbling with finances recently. The company has recently reported a loss that exceeds almost a quarter of their net worth in the start of the fiscal year of 2015. One of the reasons behind this shortcoming is that they are expected to launch the GoPro Hero 5. Irrespective of that, there has not been much movement by them in the market.

As reported by some of the experts, GoPro needs to take some big steps that will allow them to sustain in the industry. One of the things that can contribute positively to their portfolio is by slacking the price of Hero 4 Silver. GoPro sales have halted, so this might just be a fairly smart move for them. The company products have succeeded in gaining traction where the Hero brand has done relatively well. So if they cut down on the prices, then they are likely to gain more consumers.

So now if they actually do this, then in the long term they might just benefit. For instance, those who have previously not used a GoPro device then by buying a slightly reduced price Hero 4; they can actually realize the potential of this range and might just develop interest in buying Hero 5. Moreover, the device is relatively old, so reducing the price won’t harm them but will get the interest of those who don’t wish to spend so much.

Moreover, Sales of Hero 4 have been declining on a steady pace merely because those who wished to get hands on the device have already bought it. Only those who are skeptical about the price are left to be attracted.

The company need not reduce the price of all Hero 4, but the Silver version is fairly reasonable than Black with limited features. Thus, this might be the right choice in terms of cutting down the prices. This would also allow them to scrutinize if it actually helped them in terms of money or not.

In case they realize that this actually turned out to be good for them, then they can obviously reduce the prices of Hero 4 other models to embrace the change. At this point, they won’t lose anything by experimenting and this might again start to stream in revenues for them.

Hence, GoPro now needs to make its mind whether it wants to have a stumbling quarter again or have some progress to boast of until Hero 5 is launched.