The Patents That Could Control How Every Top Paddle Is Built Until 2043

Most of us now know that JOOLA has sued eleven pickleball brands, but what people don’t know is the patents they're swinging, depending on interpretation, could reshape how every top paddle is built.

The two patents at the center of this case are written broadly enough that, depending on how a court interprets them, they could cover nearly every high-performance paddle on the market today. Gen 3, Gen 4, full foam, peninsula core. If JOOLA wins on the broadest reading, they don't just beat eleven defendants, they own the construction method that defines modern pickleball paddles for the next seventeen years.

That's not hyperbole; the patents expire in 2043.

Update, May 13, 2026: Since this piece was written, JOOLA and Paddletek Group have reached a settlement resolving all claims against Paddletek and ProXR. Both brands will pay royalties and license JOOLA's propulsion core patents, and will phase out the affected paddles through the fall. The remaining nine defendants are still being actively pursued. The analysis below remains fully relevant.

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What JOOLA Is Actually Claiming

On April 7, 2026, Sport Squad, Inc., the Maryland-based company behind the JOOLA brand, filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission against eleven paddle brands: Franklin, Proton, RPM, Engage, Friday, Diadem, Facolos, Paddletek, ProXR, Adidas, and Volair.

Two days later, JOOLA filed parallel patent infringement lawsuits against all eleven in federal district courts across six jurisdictions simultaneously. The ITC complaint is aimed at one thing: blocking those brands from importing their accused paddles into the United States. The federal cases are aimed at something else entirely: money. Specifically treble damages, which means if a court finds the infringement was willful and deliberate, JOOLA could collect up to three times the actual damages from each defendant.

This is a deliberate two-track strategy. The ITC moves fast, typically resolving in 8 to 15 months compared to federal patent cases that can drag on for years. The goal is to cut off the supply chain quickly while the slower federal cases build toward a financial reckoning.

At the center of both tracks are two patents, U.S. Patent No. 12,465,826 and U.S. Patent No. 12,357,891, both titled "Game Paddle," both invented by Fabio Kachiwazaki, and both issued in late 2025. JOOLA calls what they protect "propulsion core technology." What they actually describe is a specific structural relationship between a paddle's core, the gap surrounding it, and the materials used to fill that gap.

Most coverage of this lawsuit has framed it as JOOLA going after Gen 3 copycats, brands that cloned the construction that made their Gen 3 line famous across the 3S and Pro IV series. That’s true for the most part, but there’s a clear disparity between the “diving board” construction associated with JOOLA’s lineup and the language in the patents themselves. 

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What the Patents Actually Cover

To understand why this lawsuit matters beyond the eleven brands named, you have to understand what a patent actually protects. The specification of a patent can describe materials, variations, and possibilities in broad terms. But what's legally enforceable lives entirely in the granted claims. Think of the specification as the manual and the claims as the actual legal boundary. Everything inside that boundary is owned. Everything outside it is fair game.

With that in mind, here's what JOOLA actually owns.

Patent 12,465,826 is the broader and more commercially significant of the two. To infringe it, a paddle must have five elements present simultaneously: a core whose outer boundary partially terminates inside the paddle perimeter; a gap between that core's edge and the paddle's internal perimeter; a first filler material within that gap; a hollow frame running along the edge of the paddle's head; and a second filler material inside that hollow frame.

If that sounds familiar, it should. That's the sushi roll construction that paddle nerds have been dissecting on YouTube for two years. The honeycomb polypropylene core in the center, a horseshoe shaped layer of EVA foam around the top half of the paddle between the core and the frame as the first filler, and the carbon fiber tube packed with expanding edge foam as the hollow frame. That peninsula build was first introduced on JOOLA's 3S launch and became the defining construction of their Gen 3 line across both the 3S and Pro IV series. It's also the construction that dozens of brands replicated once the performance case was proven.

But here's where it gets complicated. The patent doesn't specify materials. The core doesn't have to be honeycomb polypropylene. It can be foam, EPP, anything. The filler doesn't have to be EVA. What is protected is the structural relationship between the components, not the specific materials used to achieve it. That makes the patent material-agnostic and significantly harder to design around than most people initially assumed.

It gets broader still. Throughout the claim language, the patent uses the phrase "at least" repeatedly. The gap only needs to extend around at least part of the core boundary. The filler only needs to fill at least a portion of that gap. The frame only needs to run along at least a head portion of the paddle. A manufacturer cannot escape the claim simply by making these features partial rather than complete. A partially floating core still qualifies. A frame that only covers part of the head still qualifies. A close reading of the claim language suggests designing around this patent is considerably harder than a narrow interpretation would imply, and likely explains why so many different paddle constructions find themselves inside the boundary.

Patent 12,357,891 is narrower and more specific. It protects the throat foam block architecture found in JOOLA's Pro 4 and Pro 5 paddles. To infringe it, a paddle needs two gaps carved into the core adjacent to the throat, one on each side, filled with foam, with a frame anchored physically within those gaps forming a boundary along the paddle's interior. This is the construction that eliminates the traditional neck flex of a honeycomb core, redirecting that energy through the foam inserts instead. RPM is the only brand named under both patents, making them the defendant in the most precarious legal position of the eleven.

Critically, neither patent has anything to do with the diving board shape or any specific performance characteristic. What is protected is a structural method of construction. That distinction matters enormously for what comes next.

The Peninsula vs. Floating Core Question

Look closely at the eleven brands named in this complaint and a pattern emerges. Every accused paddle shares one structural trait: the center core connects down into the handle, the peninsula build first introduced on the JOOLA 3S. None of the defendants have fully floating cores, where the center core is completely surrounded by foam with no direct connection to the handle.

That absence is telling. And it connects directly to prior art, which is the legal argument that a construction existed before JOOLA filed their patents, potentially invalidating them entirely.

When the patent examiner reviewed JOOLA's applications, two specific paddles were cited as prior art references: the Selkirk LABS Project 002 and the Gearbox Pro Power Elongated. Both feature separated core-edge structures. The examiner reviewed those references and granted the patents regardless. That doesn't close the prior art door for defendants, but it does raise the bar considerably for walking through it.

What it also tells you is that the examiner was aware of fully floating core constructions when these patents were granted. Whether the broad "at least" language in the '826 patent extends to cover fully floating cores despite that awareness is an open legal question. If a court interprets the most broad reading of JOOLA's patents, the scope expands dramatically and almost every performance paddle on the market today is potentially inside the boundary. If the court reads them narrowly, the damage is largely contained to peninsula builds.

That interpretation question is the single most consequential thing to watch as this case develops.

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Why JOOLA Has a Point

Before picking this lawsuit apart, it's worth sitting with something uncomfortable: JOOLA built something real, and the market copied it without hesitation.

The propulsion core wasn't an obvious next step. They spent years developing it, refining it across multiple paddle generations, and watched it become the performance standard for competitive pickleball. Within 18 months of the Gen 3 line proving the concept, dozens of brands, many of them white-labeling from Chinese factories with zero original engineering investment, were selling near-identical constructions at 30 to 50 percent lower prices.

The patent system exists precisely for this situation. It's the incentive that makes R&D investment worthwhile in the first place. Without it, the rational move for any brand is to wait, watch who spends the money, copy what works, and undercut them on price. Paddle nerds benefit directly from brands willing to invest in engineering. JOOLA's patents are, in part, an argument for why that investment should continue.

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Why JOOLA's Case Isn't So Clean

The copying argument is fair. The most broad interpretation of JOOLA's patents is a different conversation entirely.

These patents aren't written narrowly. They don't say "you can't build a paddle that looks like a JOOLA Gen 3." They describe a structural relationship between a core, a gap, and the materials filling that gap, and they use language broad enough that a partial implementation still qualifies as infringement. Any material. Any core type. As long as the basic layered structure is present, you're potentially inside the boundary.

Under the most broad interpretation of JOOLA's patents, that sweeps in nearly every high-performance paddle on the market today. Not just the obvious JOOLA lookalikes. Gen 4 full foam builds. Peninsula cores. Paddles that look nothing like a 3S and were engineered independently. Technical analysts who have studied the claim language suggest that except for Gearbox, almost every paddle serious players are reaching for right now could fall inside these claims.

There's also a timing problem that's hard to ignore. JOOLA introduced propulsion core technology around 2022 and 2023. They watched the market adopt it wholesale, said nothing for two to three years, and filed suit only after full proliferation. Those paddles are already on US shores, already in players' bags. Critics aren't wrong to ask: where were you in 2023?

Friday Pickleball, one of the named defendants, put their response simply: "The technology in these patents is from a previous generation of paddles. We've already moved on to the next gen."

Whether that's a legal defense or just good PR is something a court will eventually decide.

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What This Means for Brands

The eleven companies named in the complaint have a few options: settle, fight, or find the prior art that makes the patents crack.

For most of them, settling is probably the most realistic path. An ITC investigation typically costs millions of dollars to litigate. For smaller brands already operating on thin margins in a crowded market, that math is brutal. A licensing arrangement with JOOLA, however unfavorable the terms, may simply be cheaper than the alternative.

Franklin and Adidas are the exceptions. Both have the legal infrastructure and financial resources to mount a real defense. For Adidas, the calculus is strategic: does fighting this case align with their ambitions in pickleball, or is a licensing deal the cleaner path to staying in the market? For Franklin, there is no clean path. They are mid-release on Anna Leigh Waters' signature Aurelius paddle line, built around the exact construction at the center of this complaint. They don't have the option of quietly stepping aside.

The Paddletek situation is its own cautionary tale. A founding brand of the sport, Paddletek spent years building paddles around traditional cold-pressed honeycomb cores that had nothing to do with JOOLA's patents. Then Anna Leigh Waters let her contract expire, signed with Franklin for a reported $10 million, and Paddletek scrambled. Twenty-seven days after losing the world's number one player, they launched the Reserve Honeyfoam, their first foam-based product, built around a construction that closely mirrors what the '826 patent protects. Ten weeks later, they were named in the ITC complaint. A brand that would have been completely untouched by this lawsuit made a panicked pivot and ended up inside it.

As of May 13, 2026, Paddletek and ProXR became the first brands to settle, and the terms are telling. Both will pay royalties, add JOOLA's patent number to their affected products, and phase out the Reserve Honeyfoam and ProXR Signature Jolt through the fall rather than redesigning around the patents. Paddletek Group CEO Ron Saslow stopped well short of fighting words in his statement: "We take intellectual property protection seriously and rely on it in our own business." That's a careful but meaningful concession from a brand with its own patent portfolio. The settlement happened in roughly five weeks, which tells you something about how their legal team assessed their chances. For the nine brands still in the fight, Paddletek's quick exit is either a pragmatic example to follow or a cautionary tale about what happens when you pivot into someone else's IP without doing your homework first.

One practical note that hasn't gotten enough attention: a patent litigator commenting publicly on the case pointed out that an ITC exclusion order is meaningless if the products being imported no longer infringe by the time it takes effect. Brands that move fast, redesign now, and get the ITC to bless the new construction as part of the investigation can potentially sidestep the whole thing. That window exists. It won't stay open forever.

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What This Means for You

If you play with one of the eleven accused paddles, nothing changes right now. These cases will take months to years to resolve. No paddle is getting pulled from shelves tomorrow.

But the longer game is worth paying attention to.

The most immediate risk is price. If JOOLA wins and licensing becomes the cost of doing business in the performance paddle market, those costs get passed to consumers. The paddles that currently compete with JOOLA at lower price points exist partly because the brands making them didn't spend on R&D. If they now have to pay royalties on top of manufacturing costs, that price gap closes.

The second risk is selection. If smaller brands can't afford to license, litigate, or redesign, they exit the market. The variety of options at every price point that paddle nerds have enjoyed for the last two years was a product of an open innovation environment. That environment is changing.

The optimistic version of this story is that competition doesn't disappear, it just changes shape. Brands get pushed to find new constructions, new materials, new performance approaches that aren't encumbered. Some of those might be better than what exists today. Paddle technology in 2026 looks nothing like 2022, and there's no particular reason 2028 has to look like 2026.

But for now, the construction that defines the paddles most serious players are reaching for sits inside a legal boundary that expires in 2043. How broadly a court draws that boundary will determine a lot about what the next generation of equipment looks like, who gets to build it, and what you end up paying for it.

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The Bigger Picture

This lawsuit doesn't exist in isolation. It's the loudest signal yet that pickleball's equipment market is growing up, and not entirely in a good way.

The week before JOOLA filed, CRBN and Vatic Pro quietly settled a patent infringement case between themselves. No costs awarded, terms confidential, Vatic's counterclaims dismissed without prejudice. The details will never be made public. That's what IP disputes in a maturing market look like: expensive, opaque, and resolved in ways that leave everyone guessing.

The broader pattern is clear. Gearbox has had their SST core locked down with patents for years and nobody touches it. Carbon and Six Zero are both building patent portfolios. The brands that invested early in IP protection are now the ones with the leverage. The brands that didn't are finding out what that means.

What's happening right now in pickleball happened in tennis, in golf, in every equipment-driven sport that scaled fast enough to attract serious capital. The open innovation era, where a small brand with a good idea and a Chinese manufacturer could compete with anyone, is closing. The walled gardens are going up. Only a handful of brands will have the resources to operate inside them comfortably.

That's not necessarily all bad. The brands that survive this consolidation will probably make excellent paddles. The sport isn't going anywhere. But the wide-open, anything-goes equipment landscape that produced the last three years of genuine paddle innovation may be ending.

How JOOLA's patents get interpreted will go a long way toward determining how quickly.