That's horrible that Peloton was able to do this. Maybe there's more to the story, but it seems like the court allowed them to shut down a competitor for simply building a similar (relatively obvious) product?
In fact, the CEO of Peloton had the idea for Peloton... IN A FLYWHEEL CLASS. That's insane.
I've heard from a Flywheel customer who's been following the case closely that the discovery phase was very damning for Flywheel – blatant theft of Peloton's corporate documents, including things like proprietary operating details, internal financials, projections, & future plans, with direction & understanding of Flywheel management/investors, feeding directly into Flywheel's plans.
So it was bigger than just a patent case, and Flywheel, caught red-handed, had no choice but to settle to Peloton's satisfaction.
Peloton also engage in all manner of shady marketing, heavily astroturfing all purportedly “community” forums, and silencing criticism or negative comments.
I had one of their bikes, and sold it because the service was crap. I encourage people not to do business with this shady company.
They are as absurdly simple as you would expect, so I assume Flywheel simply didn't want to/had the money to fight this. Like, here is the ultra-obscure "KETTLER World Tours" in 2018 having you race online against others on archived footage retrieved over the internet:
I think there's a solid argument that patents are generally harmful, especially patents of software or non-revolutionary product features, so I think you can form an opinion.
If we embraced copying a little more I think our society would be better off.
It is a classic example of "on the internet" patent,
The problem is not Peloton persay, the problem is the Patent office allowing these obvious "Thing in the real world -> On the internet" patents to pass right on through
In fact, the CEO of Peloton had the idea for Peloton... IN A FLYWHEEL CLASS. That's insane.