According to
Bicycle Retailer and Industry News (BRAIN), a Wisconsin judge has ruled that Trek's Active Brake Pivot technology does not infringe on Dave Weagle's Split Pivot suspension patent. Weagle had filed the suit in September, 2012, alleging that Trek willfully infringed patents
7,717,212 and
8,002,301. The article says that regarding patent '301, the judge "found enough difference in leverage ratio curves to rule Trek did not infringe on this Split Pivot patent." Regarding patent '212, there was no infringement, "because the rear shocks Trek uses do not closely conform to the shocks Split Pivot describes in the patent." Dave Weagle intends to appeal the ruling to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Court.
Although they share a similar design, a judge has ruled that Trek's ABP suspension design does not infringe on the Split Pivot patents. Full Article
Also, I know that D W is a clever guy but he's not the only person in the world capable of inventing a suspension system that works, right? If the system like ABP/Full Floater or Split pivot is technically a good idea i'm sure that a clued up engineer that's into this stuff could work it out. Is it really Trek's (or any big companies for that matter) fault that they can chuck big resources at their R&D and get there before somebody else? In my opinion this puts the bar higher and cause more ambitious and innovative designs to be created.
At the end, we all get a better product to ride...
It's his livelihood at the end of the day so good luck to him if he really believes that Trek has infringed on his patent.
Bigburd - actually no, I can't be arsed to reply to that.
When one says patents encourage innovation, it means they only understand the logic of monopoly, nothing else. Bikes are overpriced, and it should be the half of the price for the very best models.
Majority of the bikes if done in Asia, so why not remove the whole patent shit, lower the prices, and let each town/city has a few bike manufacturers.
Riders would be happy, innovation would flourish, and only sad
Oh you are 17... learn your wee wee control first before you teach daddies how to spend their time. Someone like us commenting and whining has to pay your "teenage overheads" so that you can whine instead of working and bouncing toddlers on your thigh. About that wee wee - remember: longer relationships are better training camps than few short ones, party sex is particularly not a good mean of deliberate practice it is also not as good as spiritual shag. Watch out with masterbation! If you do it every two or three days it will prolong your intercourse but also improve the quality of the sperm increasing your chance to become a dad. Oh and remember about the pineapple and off course: NO asparagus! - very important!
Remember: if you feel like this is going to be the party or a date where you might score - stay away from the asparagus!
By the way, his own interviews cut against broad patent coverage - he's always emphasizing that very minor changes have major impacts on his suspension designs. Several of his patents seek to protect suspension configurations that provide a very specific type of suspension behavior. Yet, with slight changes to pivot placement, linkage placement and length, etc., you can arrive at viable suspension designs that fall well outside his contribution.
That's from Vital.
I see the appeal succeding.
I would rather see the patent expired. If small manufacturers could use the DW they might find ways to improve on it.
The argument that patents encourage innovation is an old one that has been debunked pretty thoroughly by the rise of open source software. How good would android be if they were the only source for apps? There would be about as many as you can get for Blackberry. Instead you can choose from millions. In Android's case it is profitable to encourage innovation without excessive copyrights. It is a win win since they make more money and we get more apps.
Bike companies aren't so lucky. They would lose money, but we would get way more options. Small producers would do things Trek and DW never dreamed of since they wouldn't have to license the stuff.
Prices would drop too, since to make a bike you wouldn't have to buy rights, just parts. You sick of $10,000 bikes?
Disney died, but people who had nothing to do with his genius continue to sell Mickey Mouse.
Hardware patents make phones cost hundreds.
Sons of Anarchy rips off Shakespeare and people call it good TV, but watch them try to rip off Tolkien or Marvel Comics (not half as good as The Bard) and soon heads will roll.
Patents keep big boys in charge of the game without innovating significantly. Apple is trying that route now. I bet you they are just like HP in ten years: all but dead.
There are essentially open source bike suspension designs out there, including multilink ones. And Horst link is now out of the woods. Dave Weagle patents bug me as they are full of generic crap, and he is not afraid to sue people.
But there is nothing wrong with protecting appearance, or brand, or even an exact suspension tune of a bike - if it is narrow and specific enough. Looks like this case makes a precedent.
Nah. How you get the tune: special dampers etcetera, sure. The tune itself? Then we will see: his shock can't have platform because mine does. I invented that! LAW SUIT!!!!
lifelong court drama about windshield wipers......don't get me excited too much hahaha
Did anybody work with him personally? I guess not.
Why his he always good and the big ones always bad. I just don't get it. If D.W. wouls always be the nicest and best, why didn't he join a big name yet forever?
Don't get me wrong guys, I'm neither on Trek's nor Weagle's side. But sometimes it seems to me Weagle appears same often on court like the so called bad and evil big ones.
"But while the concentric pivot is the most noticeable feature of both designs, in itself the pivot is not even patentable — that innovation dates to the early 20th or even late 19th century. The Trek and Split Pivot patents differ in the ways the rear suspension linkages connect to the front triangle and the shock."
Source: www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2012/09/07/weagle-sues-trek-over-suspension-patent#.Uq_jjxS4aP8
Don't like him or one single one of his designs or products. Hope he has to get a real job now.
Note to internet users: If you are a moronic douche bag, stay off the forums and keep your mouth shut so no one knows and you will go much further.
I think Wiggle needs to go work for Specialized, then together they can start suing every company who tries to put round wheels on their bikes.
Hope Dave gets a different ruling from the Federal Court. He played an important part in the engineering progression of the sport and deserves to reap the rewards. Trek can really go and come up with another design, their ABP is getting stale anyways. Or else they can just pay DW a royalty.
Anyway, discussions about the ruling is probably irrelevant as most of us did not read both patents. I read the DW link one, and I can say I wouldn't be afraid to make a bike company with bikes sporting dual links. Patents are to vague (DW) or too restrictive and not even followed anymore by the companies holding them (ex: S-shape wheel path on Santa Cruz VPP)
If I understand the guys want to protect an invention, I find it very annoying when something not new is patented (concentric pivot are not new) just with some additional trickery to make it valid to the patent office. I wonder what will be the position of SRAM for instance with their thick thin pattern for chainrings, also something really old, but patented with some extra details. Wait and see.
Ehh, these patents are screwed up as there are very few reasonable ways to connect the rear wheel to the front triangle... I think patents prevent many talented small frame builders from getting into the business. After all, whoever says whatever it is not that complicated to make a bicycle frame.
Whatever what would be really funny would be to patent the claims they make, I mean the marketing ones! Because all of them always make the same claims:
_ more efficient pedaling
_ more sensitivity
_ bottomless feeling
_ Stiffer
_ Lighter...
Strangely enough nobody ever said "more fun". Maybe we don't realize that's why we ride in the first place.
Lowering price: patent = monopoly so how could it lower the price? That's non-sense. License fee may be? Ah no it's not gonna help lowering prices.
As for your innovative brands, Banshee and Cove their design is actually covered by the patent description of DW- Link. And Evil has it's own patented design, made by... Weagle.
And sorry to open your eyes, but some China's manufacturers don't give a shit about patents, SOME (we shouldn't put all chinese in the same basket) already don't mind copying or even counterfacting. And you should be able to make a difference between a quality product and a non-quality product by something else than its price tag.
Patents last too long and should expire much quicker. Half pof them are ridiculous because most of them are nearly identical and instead of patent protecting intellectual rights we have a stupid rule evading. Mondraker, Giant, Banshee - this is the same suspension thing, some small details differ. As I said: there are limited ways of connecting rear wheel to the front traingle - inventing something new can turn out real stupid - look at Evil UNdead frame or latest Commencals or Scott Voltage - WTF is that? Pure bollocks driven by the patent firewall. For instance I want to start a small production and I cannot be happier for FSR to expire, that is one of the best industry news I heard this year. Thanks to that I can provide an alternative,
Then what is your problem with "Chinese" manufacturers "stealing" designs? - I say, you produce it there then deal with your sht! Why a manufacturer should be forbidden to do the same thing on his own hand? I think there should be a law saying that after producing certain number of units of a thig you own right to produce it on your own. And as EnduroManiac says they don't give a damn anyways.
That being said, I would rather give my money to the company that had the design for a while and had perfected their design and manufacturing to produce an excellent quality product. Specialized is one company I trust, since they put in the time and money into R&D to perfect their designs. Norco used FSR for a while as well so I don't think smaller companies are really that disadvantaged due to patents.
Evil's Revolt was a floating pivot by DW, and the Undead/Uprising is the single pivot. I happen to think the Evil Revolt was a unique looking bike just like the new Scott Voltage. I think patents force companies to come up with a more creative designs and that's the whole point.
And then you'll hear "it allows us to tune the curve of the suspension...." yeah right, like any smartly designed single pivot with linker... So why did they make it complicated? To look good? The Evil looks particularly fancy I must admit, including the linkage but that surely is an example of useless complexity.
Some people like their single pivots complicated. If others like a beaten down design of an Orange Patriot than that's their problem.
Yes there is a lot of marketing involved today in biking industry but that is identical to any other industry. Ever built your own PC rig, there is millions of options to choose from for you PC spec. Every company claims they are DA SHIT.
PS I though COCK & BALLS were real engineering acronyms
All I'm saying is some linkage are extremely complicated without reason. I'm not saying all bikes should look like an Orange! But a single pivot and a smart linkage give excellent control on suspension (less fanciness on wheel path like any dual link name it VPP DW or whatever). Less complications are more reliability and less maintenance. I think the funny small linkage of the Revolt suffered some reliability issues for instance. Could be random, ok. Don't get me wrong here, I have no hate for Evil bikes, and I find them the sexiest (with Intense).
I agree that to some extent patents do motivate people to innovate more, but I honestly believe that the best designers have this internal pride to do something on their own, even if there were no patent limitations. There is a thin line between insipration and plagiarism, but in my short experience as an architect, the mix of persistence, genuine creativity and insipration is what makes the best designs. Apple - anybody? Gravity dropper - first to really make it, but it was the KS and Reverb that stole the show. No matter how much we hate it, cause it smells of stealing, we must acknowledge the fact that it takes a special mind to take some idea to it's full potential and the original inventor is not necessarily the very man to do it. At the same time, whenever we get to hooked up on some reference project in the office, and we mimmick it, it never comes out well, because it is our implementation of someone's genuine thought, and his work had a different context and set of circumstances. You have to start somewhere though, you have to do the work of learning on classics, and that first step is very hard when you have big boys telling you that you cannot do this and that. I say that at least in bicycle design, patents should not last longer than 10 years, just as you say @someguy - so that the inventor or developer gets some part of his investment back.
@ EnduroManiac To follow up on the Evil bikes discussion. Here is a link to Interview with Evil's owner describing manufacturing problems with Revolt frame. I think most of the problems that killed the Revolt were due to poor vendor in China.
www.nsmb.com/5211-the-untold-story-of-absolute-evil
But the difference between Revolt and Undead is that on Revolt the bottom end of the shock is attached to the swing arm and on the Undead it is attached to the front triangle. So on Undead it is a single pivot and the shock is actuated by the linkages. On the Revolt it is a bit more complex.
Some good close up images here:
Revolt: www.thebikelist.co.uk/evil/revolt-dh-frame-2011
Undead: fanatikbike.com/product/evil-undead-frame-9927.htm
I wish I could try one of those beauties...
Personally we I think we could do without this sort of thing...I can understand why he is pissed but then you gotta say...just maybe he should have been more prudent when putting his patent together. The last thing WE want though as the customers is for companies to start bickering over ambiguous patents (alas Apple / Samsung) as it only hurts the sport by restricting innovation and pushes prices up as companies try to recoup the cost of ridiculous court cases and payouts.
Now...it's a sunny crisp morning so I'm gonna go give my Trek a good thrashing
For the concept to work best the axis of the rear section of the rocker link would be positioned perpendicular to the seatstay, giving most effective force transfer into the frame [as is found in Brake therapy's active braking linkage system]. However DW's design does not feature a 90 degree angled rocker and instead uses a compromised angle to also attain better pedalling through mechanical inefficiency in the linkage [by having the rocker at an angle to the seatstay that resists natural movement of the linkage] - a feature prevalent in all of DW's linkage designs known as a built in pedal platform.
As such DW's design has no footing as practically every faux bar and FSR system in existence uses the same principle and has a similar angle between the seatstay and rocker link rear-section to achieve pedalling efficiency, DW's design cannot go up against all of these; and the split pivot aspect only helps counter the brake 'dive' component, and you simply can't patent an axled pivot, as such a feature is found in millions of applications all over the world.
I believe there is no argument for DW's design patent, you simply can't patent common sense linkage principles, especially not so broadly as he tried to in his patent, the entire concept isn't even applicable to motorbikes or vehicles despite him trying to include them in his patent.
Isn't it the point of Split Pivot? To allow for a lot of changes in leverage ratio by just slightly moving the components or shock?
My question for you is who do you think is abusing the system in this scenario? Having read his patents, my view is Weagle is a hold-up man. He is abusing the system to get payouts from small companies, but the large companies are not willing to fold to his tactics. Has he made contributions? Maybe, but they merit narrow patent protection, at best.
Who is abusing patents in regard to suspension technology? My take is that all patents based upon pivot placement should be invalid. All pivot placement patents fail the non-obvious test in my opinion.
And, sorry, but most people on the planet couldn't accurately define what a patent is or how to determine what rights a patent provides. So, I have my doubts that "perhaps even most of the planet" shares your categorical views.
I have worked with companies responsible for products that improve the lives of millions of people around the world (from clean tech, to semiconductor tech, to pharmaceuticals and medical devices). Their innovation is driven by a desire to solve a problem, create a better product, improve lives, etc., and patent protection is a key factor to generating the resources needed to bring their innovations to market. Patent protection is a primary factor in achieving a return on resources invested for product development and in generating the profits needed to reinvest in R&D. It is part of the foundation that drives US innovation, creates continually improving and sometimes life saving products, and supports millions of jobs. I see some "scientific progress, public good and fairness" in those results.
Had the shoes been on the other feet, you bet your backside Trek would have put Weagle in court, and probably won.
Plus companies like Trek would rather pay a fine than pay the judge. It's a lot less risky, and not sure it would cost them more.
Anyone who wants a quaility bike might buy a trek.
There will always be issues when mass quantities are sold but for the majority of trek owners I believe the experience is amazing.
And unless you have some sort of stake in the company or get some sort if profit from this decision who gives a royal f>k ?
Go ride your bike.
( or wait til spring then )
Trek makes a wide range of bikes better than yours Gunty. ( mine included )
Your selling your 2013 pivot for $3000.
How good could it be ?
Buy a Trek ..... you may want to keep it for a couple seasons.
Instead , your selling for less my 2012 remedy would sell for. Hmmmm.
That says something right there.
Fanboi ? Is that some sort of gay code word you and your friends use ?
And I win ? Are you 5 ?
Again Gunty how old are you ? 5 I hope then I'd understand your pathetic need for people to know that you have a pivot Mach 5.7 ?
It's ok bro , everyones very impressed.