Complaint Review: BetterBack

Hi there, this is Katherine Krug, from BetterBack.  We wanted the opportunity to officially respond to claims that the BetterBack is a copycat of the Nada Chair, with a few important facts.  

1. BetterBack is only one of a half dozen products that is rooted in a similar design.   Other comparable products include the VertiBack, the Got’urBack, the Easyback, the Supportiback, an the NadaChair.  All of these products feature an element that fixes to the lower back and adjustable straps that fit to to elements that go around the knee.
2. In developing the BetterBack, we worked with world-class industrial engineers and numerous beta testers to inform our product features.  It is this research—which we invested in significantly—that makes BetterBack distinct from any other competitor.  
3. We regret that the developers of the NadaChair have worked so hard to discredit the BetterBack, and to do so without acknowledging that the NadaChair’s design patent has long since expired.  We believe that if NadaChair had a legitimate claim against us, they would have gone to the courts to settle it instead of going to the press, yet NadaChair has ever taken legal action against Better Back.  It is also notable that NadaChair has singled out BetterBack with copycat claims while doing little or noting to besmirch the VertiBack, the Got’urBack, the Easyback, or the Supportiback.  We believe that a single factor—our wild success—had made us a target.  

Innovation itself is about the application of new ideas toward creating an opportunity or solve a problem.   The BetterBack has seen phenomenal sales and rave reviews from customers, due to the unique care we put into crafting an excellent product. Our intention in building BetterBack has been to improve the lives of back pain sufferers and to help prevent chronic pain among others, a goal we have pursued both legally and ethically. 

I have known the inventor and have followed his work for 30 years now. To put things charitably, something simply isn't right about the way the this woman is appropriating a product to claim herself as inventor on the Kickstarter platform. But that isn't the issue. The issue is her deceptive presentation of herself as inventor when she might still have been in diapers when the product came out.

Kickstarter cannot claim ignorance of this violation of their rule against selling products already on the market. Why? Because NadaChair posted a BetterBack ErgoChair project on their site as an excuse to air excerpts of their 1991 infomercial promoting the BackUp which looks exactly like the product she is now claiming to be her "new" BetterBack. Kickstarter vetted the project and permitted it to be submitted, in so doing, verified that they had all the facts needed to do the right thing by taking her project down.

I am not a NadaChair Employee nor have I ever been employeed by NadaChair. I am a fellow business person looking to help out a friend that is doing honest business and has been for YEARS.