PARK CITY, Utah (BRAIN) — Sweden-born safety brands POC and MIPS have agreed to a new collaboration that the companies say will lead to new technologies.
The companies have worked together in the past, and POC was one of the first bike helmet brands to offer MIPS technology, which is said to reduce brain injuries from rotational impacts. In 2017 POC introduced its own helmet technology, called SPIN, which makes similar claims. MIPS sued POC that fall, alleging that SPIN infringed on its intellectual property. The companies settled the suit the following year.
In the new collaboration announced Thursday, the companies said POC will phase out SPIN and replace it with MIPS "in the majority of its helmets in the future."
POC will offer MIPS systems in many of its helmets starting with a new POCito Crane childrens model to be released in late summer 2020.
"Safety is at the very center of POC and our approach has always been to consider everything to improve safety, even if that means doing something that has never been done before," said POC's CEO, Jonas Sjögren. "This was the basis for our initial collaboration with MIPS in 2009, where we were the first ever to integrate a rotational impact protection system in snow sports and cycling helmets."
Max Strandwitz, MIPS' CEO, said, "MIPS is committed to protect any brain from injury through our helmet-based Brain Protection System and we have more than twenty years of research and testing to support our activities.
"We are very happy to collaborate with POC, not only as an acknowledged leader in safety and the manufacturer that brought MIPS to the market, but also as they have continued to push new thinking and innovations. Our combined efforts, maximizing each other's strengths, will ultimately lead to enhancements in safety for all."
POC and MIPS are currently industry partners in a number of Swedish publicly funded projects around helmet safety.
