ThermoLife Secures Victory in Preliminary Injunction Defeat

Cleary Gottlieb successfully represented ThermoLife International LLC (ThermoLife) on April 13, 2026, in a closely watched case by defeating two motions for a preliminary injunction from nutritional supplement technology company Cardio Miracle.

The case raises questions at the intersection of patent enforcement, First Amendment rights, and e-commerce platform governance.

Cardio Miracle filed suit against ThermoLife in February 2025, seeking to enjoin ThermoLife from exercising its patent rights. The Cleary team defeated Cardio Miracle’s first preliminary injunction request on November 7, 2025, after multiple rounds of briefing, depositions, and successfully moving to strike new arguments and an entirely new expert declaration. During these proceedings, the court also denied Cardio Miracle’s emergency motion for a protective order.

When Cardio Miracle re-filed, the Cleary team mounted another comprehensive defense, demonstrating that Cardio Miracle failed to meet the required threshold showing of bad faith necessary to enjoin a patentee’s speech under Federal Circuit precedent. The Cleary team pointed to a contradiction: Cardio Miracle advertised its products as “rich in heart-healthy nitrates” to consumers while simultaneously telling the court those same products contained only “de minimis” amounts of nitrate. On irreparable harm, Cleary showed that Cardio Miracle offered no concrete evidence—no customer affidavits, no data showing lasting loss of market share—and that its own VP of Finance admitted the company’s alleged harm was “quantif[iable] in dollar terms.”

On April 13, 2026, the court denied the renewed motion in a thorough 10-page decision. The court held that Cardio Miracle’s “discussion of irreparable harm is cursory, including little to no analysis on this crucial Winter factor,” and that despite having restored online marketplace listings and the benefit of a renewed motion, Cardio Miracle failed to “provide specific information about the effect of the removal and substantiate the harm.” The court concluded: “Simply put, the Court finds that Plaintiff has not met its burden to substantiate a likelihood of irreparable harm.”

Earlier in the case, the court had also granted in part ThermoLife’s motion to dismiss, dismissing Cardio Miracle’s Arizona Consumer Fraud Act, trade libel, and Lanham Act claims.

The Cleary team was led by partners Gregory Sobolski and Sami Al-Marzoog, patent attorney Joseph Akalski, and associate David Hlavka. The team also included partners Clement Naples, Thomas Yeh, Giri Pathmanaban, and Bert Reiser, and senior intellectual property attorney Amy Thomas.