Should Puma be required to share its super shoe technology?

It doesn't matter, because after the Dolt's tariffs increase on foreign made goods, that $300 pair of the Puma shoes will cost $600...

Pepsi Cola knows Coca Cola's formula, it just cannot replicate it because Coca Cola got there first. So it has to put out something similar, but in their mind, better.

Other shoe companies can replicate PUMA's design and tech. But PUMA got there first. There isn't a need for PUMA to release its tech. That can be replicated easily. A shoe company can just rip the shoe apart and determine the components/design. The challenge for a shoe company is to come up with their own design that does not infringe on a PUMA patent and is equal, or better than what PUMA has to offer.

NIKE was the first company to broadly put out a carbon fiber plated shoe. The rest of the industry eventually caught up and depending on the various opinions out there, may have exceeded NIKE's super shoe in that regard.

Best athlete means no equipment since everyone responds uniquely to equipment. Back to the Greek games. Note that means women will not be allowed to watch or participate.

How hard is it to buy a pair of shoes, cut it up, and figure out what it’s made of?

Puma's technologies are already being used by other companies to great effect—they've simply been an early adopter in most cases. The new Kiprun KD900x LAB has a slightly extended toe from the looks, as does one of the newer Nike prototypes. Meanwhile, Puma's top-of-the-line Nitro Elite Foam, which is an aliphatic TPU, has been adapted by ASICS for their newest super shoes, which are now using A-TPU for FF-Leap.

In other words, Puma's competitors are watching and I don't necessarily think we are in an era similar to the original Vaporfly 4% where every other company is miles behind. Puma doesn't need to share so that the others can catch on when they're already there.

So dumb

That's your best counter point? So dumb.

What else is there to say when the basics of innovation and patent law are outside your grasp? What, like Nike pioneered a life-saving drug or surgical technique? You chose to say a dumb thought, live with the reaction it gets.

Being dumb can limit what you can of think to say. The basics are not remotely out of my grasp. Neither is the idea of regulating a sport so that no competitors have technological advantages others don't. As far as pioneering life saving drugs go, I believe that a company that's done so should not be able to patent such a drug and then over charge for it by obscene amounts. If they do patent it there should be strict regulations on how much they can charge.

I was right.

And what entity would be forcing a private, multi-national corporation to share their technology?

Oh so like the way bike frame companies all have the same frame, or skis are all the same, etc, etc. etc.

Naw dawg this is the heyday of running shoes and my chance to spend $300+ on as many "best shoes ever!" shoes to get as many WRs as I can in my local parkrun.

Me too.

the deep state, duh

A government conceivably could. The governing body of a sport couldn't force a corporation to but could make the corporation to choose between sharing their technology or banning it from their sport. Puma's brush spikes were banned in 1968.

Exactly, such a naive belief. They're just running shoes, not something that holds promise to save or improve lives dramatically. Some of these people must double down and keep shoving their head further up their own @$$ simply because they so delight in the smell of their own farts.

So you kind of summed this up in a nutshell - they have an updated foam. They tested a square of it in the lab vs what they believe other brands have, and concluded it was better. They make a shoe and send off to this dude at UMass Amherst who tests it on some sub elite runners on a treadmill who are extremely excited to wear this new shoe. We don't know what shoe they wore first (it would reason that with 6-7.30 per mile 5km runners, that they will start any test considerably better than they finish) and he concludes they used 3.5% less energy in a very short test (it has to be because they are testing 4 shoes each). I can promise you having observed and been part of this exact type of testing before it is absolutely non-conclusive.

The final point I'd make about the foam, unless it is a radically different foaming technique, it won't be long until every brand has access to it. Protecting a raw material is almost impossible because all the intel is owned by someone like Arkema (pebax supplier) who supply everyone. The reason Nike was able to hold everyone off with the original zoom X foam is because they had an exclusivity agreement with a UK company called Zotefoam that had a unique and patented manufacturing process which was key in the foams physical properties.

This is absolutely 100% false, and you are clueless as to how intellectual property works. Coca Cola is protected by trade secret. If Coca Cola had patented their formula (their right for "getting there first"), the patent would have expired 100+ years ago and would necessarily be public domain. You cannot patent without the invention becoming public domain. Further, Coca Cola cannot protect their formula through trademark, only certain elements of their brand.

Coca Cola is only protected because of trade secret. That's it.

I think your posts are usually great and pretty informative, but I wanted to clarify a few points from your post. Wouter (the lead researcher behind this study) deserves a bit more credit than just being "this dude at UMass Amherst", he has been researching super shoes since their inception. Due to the issue of fatigue, well designed super shoe studies are typically mirrored so the order of trials will be shoe 1, shoe 2, shoe 3, shoe 3, shoe 2, shoe 1. That way you can account for fatigue and mitigate the effect of the order that the shoes were used. Is it perfect? No, but it is better than only taking one sample and disregarding that fatigue will build during the trials, even if the participants are running at a sub-threshold effort.

During each 5 minute trial, the participant usually takes 1 to 2 minutes to reach a steady state effort, and then they remain at steady state for the rest of the trial. The data is only processed from the last 2 minutes of each trial to ensure that there are no big fluctuations in energy consumption and that the participant is primarily using aerobic metabolism to produce energy. So, theoretically, the participants will finish the trials at a steady state tempo effort similar to marathon effort/pace, not holding on for their lives. If you can find 20 elite marathoners willing to run multiple marathon length efforts in a lab setting while wearing different footwear conditions, you'll be the hero of footwear research. Until then, the 5 minute trials are a good balance of feasibility for participants and applicability to out of the lab performance, i.e. we know if you reduce your metabolic cost in the lab, you are probably going to run faster in a race.

I do agree that you would probably not see a 3.5% reduction in metabolic cost in a professional athlete wearing the shoes, but even a 2 or 2.5% reduction in metabolic cost for top athletes would be incredible. At the end of the day, I call it 50% innovation and 50% marketing hype for Boston. Either way, we are in a fantastic era of shoe development and have all the major brands pushing each other to not settle when it comes to racing footwear.