While most patents within the sector are geared towards popular sports like baseball, hockey, basketball, and football, these sports are by no means the only sports going through the analytics revolution. While the innate popularity of the aforementioned sports may bring most of the attention in the patent space to themselves, more room is left for small start-ups, like Incus Performance, to capitalize on the less popular sports. Incus chooses to focus on triathletes, and it is already making its mark on the industry, attracting high-profile investors in the space such as the double Olympic gold medalist, Alistair Brownlee.
Incus Performance is a small start-up, based out of Leicestershire, Great Britain, that is developing wearable devices that track performance analytics for swimming and running, all in one device. Considering the nature of a triathlon, the applications of the device are obvious, and to make the device even more directed towards triathlete, aerodynamic resistance has also been minimized. This provides an all-in-one device to help triathletes improve their performance throughout multiple legs of their sport.
Incus may not have quite left its mark on the patent space yet, with its most recent, and only, patent application, U.S. Patent Pub. No. 20200337639, publishing in late October. The application appears to be fairly specific to Incus' currently commercialized products, detailing a vest-based wearable that tracks performance statistics and provides assessment based on these statistics. However, be on the lookout for this to change, as there is an obvious hole in patenting in this space for smaller sports such as triathlons.
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