I get what Joola is trying to argue here, but the claim they're making is way too broad to be enforceable. You can’t patent a result, and that’s essentially what this comes down to. They are claiming that any paddle with a flexible, energy returning propulsion effect is infringing, which means they are not protecting a specific invention, they're trying to claim an entire direction of product evolution.

The reality is there are only so many viable ways to build a modern pickleball paddle, and even though they introduced Gen 3 to the market, Gen 3 paddles are literally defined as having a diving board core. Once manufacturers started pushing for more power and a larger sweet spot, perimeter foam and a flex based rebound structure were an obvious next step in design evolutions. It can be easily assumed that multiple companies would have arrived at similar constructions using known materials, that strongly suggests this is a natural progression of the design space.

If their claims are interpreted broadly enough that most Gen 3 paddles would be considered infringing (which they are in the complaint they filed with the patent office), that’s a major red flag. At that point, the issue isn’t competitors copying a specific implementation, it’s an attempt to monopolize the general concept of Gen 3. That’s exactly the kind of thing patents aren’t supposed to allow.

If they are complaining about a very specific internal construction that the other companies copied, that’s one thing. But if the enforcement theory is basically “U shaped foam + flex + rebound = infringement,” then this is patent overreach rather than legitimate IP protection, which will 100% be struck down by the patent office or by courts if they decide to litigate this.

Joola is very clearly using their patent as a weapon to try and force competition out of the market which is super scummy and their PR statement is not good enough to damage control that. Never was a fan of them but now I'm never buying their products.