Colorado entrepreneur in battle over golf devices

A golf gadget firm based mostly in Fort Lupton opened for enterprise final August.

Now, it’s caught within the tough.

“If I can keep it going, that’d be great,” Dalton Rauer informed BusinessDen. “But with all these legal fees, I have basically no profit anymore. And if it keeps going, I might have to close up shop and find something else to do.”

Ice Tees, the Colorado firm Rauer based 10 months in the past, makes tee gadgets for golfers to raise a ball when the bottom is difficult. His pal’s dad was looking for a product to raised work on his swing throughout the colder months, so he enlisted Rauer, an engineer by commerce, to make him one.

Rauer developed what would finally turn out to be Ice Tees’ flagship product, the Turf Tee Base. It twists into the bottom and acts as an alternative choice to the inconsistent pegs at ranges and simulators, he stated. After his pal’s dad was happy with it, a number of of his buddies informed him he ought to begin promoting it to the lots.

But a Florida-based firm, Tee Claw Sports, believes Rauer’s gadget is eerily just like its personal. The enterprise, based by John Black in 2014, makes a twist-in-ground tee gadget as nicely.

According to a lawsuit Tee Claw filed in April, which was transferred to Colorado District Court final month, the corporate believes Rauer and Ice Tees owe it $100,000 for infringing on its patent with Ice Tees’ $7 widgets.

“The way their patent is written isn’t good,” Rauer stated of Tee Claw. “Every lawyer that I’ve talked to said that I’m not infringing.”
An explainer of Tee Claw Sports’ flagship product.

Black reached out to Rauer and Ice Tees within the fall as a result of he believed its product violated two of Tee Claw’s patents, the lawsuit says. In November, after Rauer didn’t reply, Black’s lawyer despatched Ice Tees a stop and desist letter ordering the enterprise to cease making and promoting the Turf Tee Base. Rauer didn’t reply to that both, so she despatched a second letter in December, in response to the lawsuit.

Black and Tee Claw took the silence as a way to escalate its authorized threats. But Rauer sees it in a different way.

“It feels like he saw my product and saw there was competition, and now he’s trying to smoke me out so I don’t take any of his sales away,” Rauer stated.

Tee Claw can be accusing Ice Tees of promoting the merchandise on Amazon, although Rauer stated these are simply knock-offs that popped up after his firm “blew up” on TikTok and Instagram across the holidays. He solely sells Ice Tees inventory on TikTok Shop or direct-to-consumer via his web site, he stated.

Court filings point out the 2 sides are speaking and are progressing towards a settlement.

“Honestly, I never knew (Tee Claw) was a thing until I started,” Rauer stated.

In the meantime, Rauer stated he’s gotten a patent for the Turf Tee Base, one thing that value him $12,000, in an try to separate his product from Tee Claw’s. That’s on prime of the $10,000 he’s spent on authorized charges, which has minimize into the earnings of the practically $100,000 in gross sales Ice Tees has garnered because it began.