ADIDAS CHALLENGE : Tarzana Inventor Files Lawsuit for Royalties From Sales of High-Tech Running Shoe

He didn’t invent the light bulb.

No, Farouq Tamiz’s 1977 patent was for something less significant--a shoe that could count and record steps. According to his design, a pin protruding from the sole would trigger a digital counter, like that in a car’s odometer.

Tamiz sent copies of the patent to hundreds of shoe companies, but there were no takers.

Then last year Tamiz, who sells insurance from his Farmers Insurance agency on Ventura Boulevard, was watching television in his Tarzana home when he saw a piece on the evening news about a new $119 running shoe from Adidas called the Micropacer.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Tamiz said. “That was my product.”

The Adidas shoe, introduced last June and sold in the U.S. and Europe, has a built-in microprocessor that is activated by a sensor in the middle of the sole. A tiny computer with a digital readout calculates the number of miles run, how long it took and even the number of calories consumed.

So Tamiz is taking Adidas to court.

In a case filed last month in Federal District Court in Los Angeles, Tamiz charges Adidas with patent infringement, and seeks to force the company to stop selling the shoe. Exact damages aren’t specified, but court papers say Tamiz is asking for more than $10,000.

He also is asking the court to revoke a 1985 U. S. patent granted to a London engineer, William Johnson. The Johnson patent, which cites Tamiz’s patent as a reference, is for a shoe with an electronic pedometer. Johnson’s patent number is printed inside of the tongues of Adidas’ Micropacer shoes.

So far, Tamiz has spent $15,000 in legal fees on the Adidas case, he said. He could not find a lawyer who would represent him on a contingency basis, an arrangement rarely made in patent cases.

Officials of Adidas USA, based in Mountainside, N. J., would not comment on Tamiz’s lawsuit. But Francis J. Kolb, product-development manager for Adidas, wrote in a January letter to Tamiz that the Micropacer is “vastly different from Mr. Tamiz’s simple counting device.”

Conceded Tamiz: “They have improved on my idea a little bit.”

But Tamiz’s lawyer, Daniel H. Lidman of Beverly Hills, said Adidas “couldn’t have gotten where they are without the idea from our guy,” he said.

There are legal precedents for winning such cases. “Obviously, they’re not the same, but they can be covered under law as being equivalent,” said J. Georg Seka, a partner in the prominent patent law firm Townsend & Townsend, based in San Francisco.

The question is whether there will be enough money to fight over.

Adidas originally projected first-year sales of 30,000 pairs of Micropacers. The company will not comment on how well it is selling.

However, James Spring, president of Wilton, Conn.-based Sports Marketing & Research Technology Inc., said he doesn’t think the shoe has much chance of becoming a best-seller. He also notes that last year there was a decline in the market share for running shoes overall in the United States.

The average amount awarded for damages in a patent-infringement case is 5% of gross sales, Seka said. If, for example, Adidas were to sell 15,000 pairs of the Micropacer this year at $60 (wholesale) each, that would amount to $900,000. A 5% royalty would be $45,000.

Some retailers aren’t terribly excited about the Micropacer. The Footlocker Store in Canoga Park recently dropped the price on the Adidas shoe from $119 to $80. “We’ve been taking a beating on them,” said Joe Whiting, the store’s manager.

The Inside Track, a Ventura store for athletic shoes, won’t carry the Micropacer. “I think they’re gimmicky,” said Gary Tuttle, the store’s owner. Tuttle considers himself a serious runner; he finished second in the 1985 Boston Marathon.

But Tamiz, who immigrated in 1969 to the United States from Afghanistan, isn’t the type to take the Adidas challenge lying down.

Once a week, he takes to the Southern California airwaves from a small radio station in Redondo Beach. The show he hosts and produces--Radio Voice of Afghanistan--protests the Soviet occupation of Tamiz’s homeland.

Tamiz and his lawyer say they plan to keep up the Adidas fight as well.