Intellectual Property

[Tristan]

Genuine IP in the bike industry is pretty rare. SRAM, Shimano and Campag play the patent games to protect their designs and limit what the competitors can do, but there isn't much about the rest of the bike which is patented.

I was thinking about this last night and completely overlooked mountain bike suspension. This is an area where this is plenty of genuine IP and plenty of patents.

Specialized purchased the patent for FSR "4-bar linkagae" where the dropout pivot was on the chainstay which forced cometitiors to use "faux-bar" pivots on the seatstay. This was a big reason why early Specialized full suspension bikes were much better than the competition. It's probably worth noting that Specialized didn't 'invent' the idea but licensed it from a guy named Horst Leitner who adopted it from car suspension (but turned 90* to suit bikes.) Giant's NRS bikes use a chainstay pivot but they lowered the location below the area covered by the Specialized patent.

In modern times a guy name Dave Weagle has a patented suspension linkage called DW-Link which can be modified for different uses of bike. He contracts to many companies around the world applying his patented design to their ethos of how they want their bikes to ride.

He's been in court a few times and even sued Trek. The strategy and paperwork behind his IP must be a massive part of his business in both time and money.

[Bewheels]

I am responsible patents and trademarks at my company - from the perspective of creating things to patent and/or trademark.
And what 11.4 has posted (below) is an important distinction between a patent and a trademark. As he points out, trademarks are fairly easy and cheap to get - you can do it yourself, no lawyers needed. One important difference between patents and trademarks (beyond their purpose) is that trademarks can be localized here in the US... you can have a trademark for something that is only affective in one state within the US or all states within the US.

Gary laid out the business case ($$$) around getting and protecting patents. Not easy and certainly not cheap but for some company's it is the difference between success and failure.
The other thing to consider with patents/trademarks is protecting yourself. Just because you have a patent/trademark does not mean you have to defend it. But it can mean that you have some protection if someone comes after you.
For simplicity's sake, let consider a trademark...you trademark a seat cluster design at the national level. You see other frame builders pick it up and use it. Perhaps you are cool with that and just let it go. Then one day a large bike brand decides they like it and start using it, and they want you to "cease and desist" using it. If you have a trademark on it, it makes it a different conversation than if you don't. Of course it may ultimately come down to who is willing to spend more money with lawyers, but at least you are starting from a different stance.

If you have something like a novel pair of dropouts, ... without seeing them of course ... I would expect that it's not a functional difference in the sense of a different way to install your wheel or your rear derailleur, but rather a design that is simply unique, like Sacha's stay ends or at the other end of the price range, All City's. Now that kind of design isn't a subject for a successful patent, but it can be a basis for a successful trademark. Even a color (Bianchi Celeste green, for example) could be trademarked -- not for exclusive use anywhere but for use in bikes. Decals and logos, definitely. Innovative lug graphics, definitely. If you have something you want to protect, trademark protection is actually inexpensive to get (compared to patent) and much less expensive to defend. So if the real thrust of this thread was to define how a builder could protect his/her own unique frame attributes and image, I'd think about treating each item as a trademark and go from there. The patent process has been eviscerated in the US (in all honesty, it's only been lowered to the level it's been at throughout the rest of the world) and the costs of obtaining and protecting a patent are prohibitive. The last company I ran had a 25 patent portfolio and we literally spent half of our operating expenses on prosecuting those patents all over the world. (If you weren't aware, you can patent in the US but it doesn't protect you from infringement in China. You have to file in a multitude of jurisdictions, and be prepared to defend in a multitude of jurisdictions.) Trademarks are pretty easy to handle and for frame builders who want to protect their product from infringement, that's a much more effective way to go.

[Bewheels]

Just read the forum rules for this section and added my name to the signature line but it does not show in the above post.

Bewheels = Brian McLaughlin

[joosttx]

Imitation is the finest form of flattery!

But living well is the sweetest revenge, which means exploit your smarts, protect your smarts or not care. And BTW there is a lot more to making money than just having an idea or product.

[joosttx]

That IP is now in the public domain. The Saffron is protected for 20 years though.

The old ever-SAFFRONing patent strategy.....

[Mike Mcdermid]

this thread in someways has made me think quite negatively tbh ,in that its almost a how much help are you prepared to give people thing,im sure some will understand if you turn round and in a commercial environment went "knowledge costs money" are you prepared to pay for what i know, but do you know what and ive never really thought about it before in this way, it really pisses me off when someone says on the phone , I'm buying someone else's product because i heard you were making them, and then to top it you don't actually get the credit for bailing company x out of the shit in the first place, i suppose its never bothered me before because most of the quite major stuff has been hush hush work, and i suppose it does cultivate a more laid back attitude as most stuff outside that sphere is relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

[Bewheels]

Mike,
Not that I am one to tell you or anyone what to do around this, but having worked with many innovators it generally comes down to every one's own personal and/or corporate philosophy.
With that said I have known people who's philosophy is rooted in "share everything" get tweaked under certain circumstances, and I have known people who want to patent every breath they take let go of things I would have never expected. In other words no matter where on the spectrum someone wants to exist, things are not absolute.

Personally - I work for a publicly traded company in a very competitive market. The expectation is that if I, or my group, comes up with something we keep it to ourself because of the potential value to the company and our shareholders. With that said, there are certain processes that my group has come up with that help other tech developers (not in our company) serve a community of users that tend to be ignored. We share these processes freely.

For those that follow IP, you may have already seen this...about a week ago Elon Musk opened up the patents that were filed as part of his Tesla car company.
A quote from Musk::
When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible. read the article here...

[e-RICHIE]

this thread in someways has made me think quite negatively tbh ,in that its almost a how much help are you prepared to give people thing,im sure some will understand if you turn round and in a commercial environment went "knowledge costs money" are you prepared to pay for what i know, but do you know what and ive never really thought about it before in this way, it really pisses me off when someone says on the phone , I'm buying someone else's product because i heard you were making them, and then to top it you don't actually get the credit for bailing company x out of the shit in the first place, i suppose its never bothered me before because most of the quite major stuff has been hush hush work, and i suppose it does cultivate a more laid back attitude as most stuff outside that sphere is relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

I am not sure what this ^ means. Are you reacting to getting copied and seeing others profit from your ideas, or is it about giving away advice for free?

[11.4]

I've run a series of venture-financed technology start ups and worked with bike industry participants and with many governmental and foreign entities to develop and/or protect proprietary designs, whether patented or trademarked, confidential or classified. It's all a gnarly rats nest of issues and frsnkly, no builder or sole proprietor in the bike business has any business filing for a patent. It's a waste of time and money. The biggest part of defending a patent is the real life aspect of branding it and making sure that the whole world sees any imitators as just that. Be smart in your branding and you don't have to patent it. Everybody wiki look at it and call it yours. Put it in the public domain so no one else can try to patent it, and then just do it best and with the best recognition.

[Freddy Salgado]

In olden times you created your own designs like the Macpherson strut.
You have 3 similar short linkage designs, VPP, DW, and Giant’s Maestro. Santa Cruz bought the original creative design from the inventor of Outland VPP bikes. Santa Cruz re engineer the original VPP design significantly (more than 10%), new VPP born from the ashes of Outland. Santa Cruz share the VPP patent with Intense Cycles.
DW link and Giant Maestro short linkage bikes look like the Santa Cruz VPP with the exception of slight alterations to the linkages and shock placement, not much of a stretch with creativity but altered enough to call it something else?
Only creative thing coming out of rear suspension bike industry these days is shock technology, lots of IP worth protecting there.

Anyone ever hear of a poor mans patent? Are they worth the effort?

In modern times a guy name Dave Weagle has a patented suspension linkage called DW-Link which can be modified for different uses of bike. He contracts to many companies around the world applying his patented design to their ethos of how they want their bikes to ride.

He's been in court a few times and even sued Trek. The strategy and paperwork behind his IP must be a massive part of his business in both time and money.

[11.4]

FYI, working a couple years ago with a bike industry up-and-comer, they wanted to patent two key aspects of a design and protect the design from international infringement (aka Chinese knockoffs). The cost of two bare-bones patent applications (review, drafting, submission, negotiation with the USPTO, and final fees) was $62,000. For global protection (protecting the company in Europe, Africa, South America, etc.) would have required coverage in 13 additional international offices and an additional cost of $83,000. They decided to do 5 countries only (China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the EEC, and Mexico, thus covering one major additional market (Europe) and three areas where a fair amount of infringement was going on. All someone had to do to get away scot-free was to shift manufacturing to Vietnam or whatever. This limited coverage still cost them $48,000. So they spent $110,000 for mediocre coverage that would slow down a few infringers but not stop anyone who was serious. Their patent counsel also advised that if there was infringement even in the US, the cost of defending the patent (and if they didn't defend, the PTO would consider the patent abandoned and not protect it at all) would be a bare minimum of about $25,000 and would likely go to $75,000 or higher to take the infringer to court. Ongoing filing and updating costs on those two patents run about $8,000 a year, again a bare bones effort. All this assumes that nothing leads to additional patents, or to any proactive efforts to block potentially infringing developments.

My point is that if you want to get into a patent, realize that the cost of the patent is so prohibitive. And as pointed out above, you don't really have protection any longer from a US patent -- at one time a patent meant that the PTO had examined it carefully and looked for prior art, so if you got it, you were pretty invincible. Now you simply have a time stamp and a description of what you seek to patent, so if anyone can show that they had developed and sought to commercialize it earlier, or if they can show that their product differs even rather slightly from what your patent describes, your patent doesn't do anything. You either lose, or you are forced into a rat race of additional patent filings to fill holes in your original filing or to extend the scope of your protection. Anyone can basically run you bankrupt or force you to give up defense of your patents -- at which time you irrevocably lose the rights they conferred. See the point?

The real perspective to take is two-fold: First, you do it better and brand it better, and everyone else will be seen simply as a cheap infringer (think cheap Chinese carbon rims). And second, running a business isn't about making the same product without enhancement for year after year. Notice how quickly Chris King and Phil Wood are enhancing their product lines to compete. Same for Shimano, obviously. Same for the major frame companies -- in particular look at Specialized and Cervelo. So as a individual custom frame builder, think about how to improve and change your frames every year. I remember talking to Mario Confente about a frame he was building for me. It was the same tubing sets, same braze-ons, same components, that everyone used. He had a sense of quality that wasn't unique and a sense of aesthetic that, at the time, was. Later I bought multiple frames from Richard Sachs and saw that Richard had bikes that were, in every regard, superior to Mario's. I owned Rickerts, Poghliaghis (early original ones), Colnagos, Pegorettis, Masis, Meltons, Eisentrauts, Gordons, Spectrums, a Kirk, an Indy Fab, you name it. All beautiful bikes but I couldn't say that bikes were evolving that fast. Richard's basic color scheme or Pegorichie lugs didn't change for ... what, ... twenty years? But they didn't need to. He branded well and made his bike better than anyone could imitate. So did most of the other great brands. If they slipped away from that standard, like Masi or Colnago did for a time, they lost ground almost instantly. Today carbon frames are changing every year and builders like Crumpton are changing to stay ahead of the mob, while at the same time they are branding their lines and building to a quality standard that a Cervelo will never meet. Steel frames are moving the same way. Just look at Vanilla and what Sacha has started. And look at new markets that builders have built and sometimes specialized in -- like Sachs in cross and Tiemeyer in track. Those are all ways to define, brand, and excel in a market. That's how to protect what you build.

[Mike Mcdermid]

I am not sure what this ^ means. Are you reacting to getting copied and seeing others profit from your ideas, or is it about giving away advice for free?

i suppose both ends of the spectrum in some cases its the blatent we looked at what you do and couldn't do the same but can you tell us how, I became aware of recentley, I'm lucky im no intellectual so just have to go half the deal for the property title ,dont mind sharing if folks ask like i say products can develop dual directions but hey dont get so far up a path you get stuck then need free consults

[e-RICHIE]

i suppose both ends of the spectrum in some cases its the blatent we looked at what you do and couldn't do the same but can you tell us how, I became aware of recentley, I'm lucky im no intellectual so just have to go half the deal for the property title ,dont mind sharing if folks ask like i say products can develop dual directions but hey dont get so far up a path you get stuck then need free consults

I'll have to think on that one atmo.

[bencooper]

i suppose both ends of the spectrum in some cases its the blatent we looked at what you do and couldn't do the same but can you tell us how, I became aware of recentley, I'm lucky im no intellectual so just have to go half the deal for the property title ,dont mind sharing if folks ask like i say products can develop dual directions but hey dont get so far up a path you get stuck then need free consults

I've had that - people who ask exactly how I make something, because they want to make and sell it themselves. Of course there's a limit to what you can hide from people, they can always reverse-engineer things. I guess the difference is that I'm happy to share general techniques (like the cheap mitering setup I put up here) but specific details I'm not.

Doing work for other inventors, I now just make sure I charge a good hourly rate. I used to spend far too much time being helpful for no return.

[Amaro Bikes]

I think is a bit different the situation on big mass production brands as campy/shimano/sram and usual spec/cannondale/trek and the like, they have certain tch battles about shifting systems, double suspension pivots or "super-dupperevolutionary" new materials to blind the big market bucks.

But on the small one-man framebuilding world, I like to think it's not just about the resulting product or techniques, but also about the person behind. No matter how many times I would try to copycat whatever Richard, Dario, Drew, Tyler, Kris, Rody, Nick, Steve, Mike or any other of the big names might be doing, I would never be them, and even if I manage to create a perfect copy of any of their works, it will be lacking the most important part of the deal, which is authenticity.
So to me, no matter to share, no matter if anyone ever dare to copy me (you never know, some people might be crazy enough as to think I'm worth copying...), good luck for them, I just hope they get the whole package included with all this and they get the daily inner fights resulting in the nightmaress where ideas are born.

You can build any bike, but you can't be someone else

[e-RICHIE]

I would never be them, <cut>

These are the most important words ^ on this thread atmo. We are not them. Imitation aside, I've never known of a framebuilder who had to protect his work or ideas to the point that patents or trademarks made sense, particularly when factoring the costs in dollars and energy it would take to protect them.

[Will Neide]

.....I've never known of a framebuilder who had to protect his work or ideas to the point that patents or trademarks made sense, particularly when factoring the costs in dollars and energy it would take to protect them.

I agree with not pursuing patents, but I think trademarks are a good idea. I don't think the two should be lumped into the same category.

[e-RICHIE]

I agree with not pursuing patents, but I think trademarks are a good idea. I don't think the two should be lumped into the same category.

I was lumping the dollars/energy costs together more so than patents and trademarks. I agree, they are different as Lane about posted way ^ above.

[Dave Anderson]

I agree that Trademarks are important. However, you don't have to have it registered for it to be valid and protected. You just have to be able to show that you used if first. Registration mostly just allows others searching for a mark to know that your mark is already out there and in use.

[abbeyQ]

The thing to keep in mind about IP is that at least in the US it's up to the creator to police it. So unless the idea in question is going to make enough money to protect itself it's probably not worth the trouble to patent it in the first place. At least for a small company with limited resources.

If you're building a brand with the intent to sell or draw investors you need to tie up all the IP you can. It all just kind of depends on what your goals are. I think for most of the people here, you're better off just keeping your head down and worrying about what you have control over.