Cervelo's Patent

Had nothing to do and did a search on cervelo in the canadian patent office. And boy was i surprised!

Cervelo has actually patented the “curve”
Didn’t look have something similar even before cervelo?

Here’s the link btw

http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/details?patent_number=2319985&language=EN

http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/claims?patent_number=2319985&language=EN

WE CLAIM AS OUR INVENTION:

  1. An arrangement of a bicycle frame wherein the seat tube below the seat post-seat tube junction, and down to the down tube-seat tube junction, is greatly curved so as to follow the curvature of the rear wheel.

  2. An arrangement of a bicycle frame wherein the rear wheel is positioned such that the tread of the tire is in extremely close proximity to the trailing edge of the curvature in the seat tube of claim 1.

bump.

I wonder of Orbea is paying a royalty to Cervelo - or does the Cervelo patent only hold true in Canada?

i don’t think so. but the question remains. how can cervelo call this as thier invention if it had been seen on earlier bikes?

Wonder how Aegis got around this for the T2? Maybe they admitted there’s wasn’t aero since they use verticle drop outs and don’t suck up to the wheel…

First, it’s not granted yet so no royalty needs to be legally paid - and even so it would only prevent others from making, using or selling in Canada. Also, the claims probably won’t stand up (my opinion) as they are too either broad or ambigious to grant. The US granted one is better, but the applications aren’t that great (sorry Gerard) (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=cervelo&OS=cervelo&RS=cervelo) This would, in theory, stop others from making, using or selling (or importing) bikes with the large P3 type curve (not the P2k cutaway).

I’m suprised they don’t have more, particulary given their innovative position in the market. Looking at the P3 I can think of 5 or 6 things I would file things on to protect their R&D investments in the long run, and i’m sure there are more on their new bikes…as well I’d be at least doing design patents all over the place.

Which earlier bikes? When were they released/documented? If there is a bike that was out there before they filed, could be interesting…

Keep in mind that (in the US), this is what they say they invented:

1. A bicycle frame comprising:  

a first tube;

a second tube extending transversely from an upper region of said first tube, in a direction;

a third tube extending transversely and downwardly from a lower region of said first tube, and towards a same direction as said second tube; and

a two-part tube joining respective ends of said second and third tubes, said two-part tube having a straight upper part and a curved lower part, said straight upper part being substantially vertical and said curved lower part being curved longitudinally towards said first tube such as to conform to a curvature of a bicycle wheel.

not sure which bikes, but they would have to be pre 2000. Also, (yes, bored today at home) I looked at the file history of the US patent and they didn’t cite much information (prior art) that was known previously to them - I would think there should have been a huge list of it. I know Trek patents the hell out of their frames, so i’m suprised none of it was even called up. I also saw their first rejection - and it was pretty light from the patent office side - implying that no other bike information was really called up to cite against the patent, just termonology changes.

In short: good from some perspectives, bad from others. Depends if your intent is to litigate or just scare smaller companies into royalties.

The examiner cited half the prior art, then didn’t put up much of a fight. Like you said, depending on which side of this you’re on, that’s a good/bad thing.

I’m really surprised to see that cervelo/vroomen/white do not have more coverage in this area. Doesn’t seem like there’s much art out there or at least you can get enough stuff allowed to start wielding the giant patent portfolio.

Regarding the curved seat tube, in 1992, I had a custom built Zinn with a curved seat tube, aero tubing (true temper) and extremely short chainstays. The same basic bike (non-custom) was also sold as a KHS and the design was used on the 1992 Olympic team bikes as well. I believe the team bikes were labeled as GT’s but they may have been built by someone else (Yamaguchi?). There were other bikes (Litespeed Tachyon, Peregrine) that had similar designs at the time.

I cannot see how the Cervelo design differs substantially from any of these bikes.

“You know you are getting old when you see your father in the mirror.” anon.

FYI, our Tachyon had a seat tube that below the seat tube junction followed the curvature of the back wheel in the late 80s.
:slight_smile:
Herbert
Litespeed

GT Super bikes had the same cutout. I also had a Tiemeyer custom frame that had the same cutout. Tiemeyer was involved in the 1996 Oly Superbikes.

so if another bike manufacturer makes a frame similar to the P3 are they liable to be sued?

Theoretically. However Cervelo would have to enforce the patent themselves, and its very expensive to do patent litigation.

so if another bike manufacturer makes a frame similar to the P3 are they liable to be sued?

yes - but the patent has to stand in court on 2 things. Generally speaking it first has to ‘infringe’, i.e., be the same as at least 1 claim (which are usually more narrow than the general public thinks once they are defined) and second it has to be valid, i.e., not tossed out by the courts as shouldn’t have gotten it in the first place (one of many reasons being that someone else developed it before you). That said, it takes on average (according to the ABA), about $1M to get to the court for the litigation to actually start in trial so most settle beforehand. For most companies they can use them as a “mutually assured destruction” type thing - you don’t sue me and I won’t sue you on our patents, and then just go screw the little guy who has none. OR they use them as business tool negotiations (i.e., I have this patent on our bike, so buy from us and just re-brand it instead of the knockoff competitor, and by the way, we’re charging a royalty on what we sell you).

At that point its basically a business tool - but the issue being it takes 2-4 years to get it. However, if you start the process early enough, say at the time of conceptual development for some bike frame, you could in theory have something out by the time your new bike frame is in year 2 production, about the same time competitors are producing “similar” things.

then what the point of spending money on a patent?

then what the point of spending money on a patent?

Business positioning - can put you in a better bargaining position with your competitors & retailers, as well as put some barriers to entry into the marketplace for new people starting up. The historic drive from patents is to reward people for innovation by ensuring they have some period of time to practice their invention without the fear of knockoffs. As a new innovator it’s hard to invest say $1million in R&D on a new bike design and then have someone rip-off your design for $10k and a mold in their garage and start producing competing products - they don’t need to sell as many to recoup the costs but you do, so there is no incentive to be the first mover without protection. Basically you are paying for a legal monopoly - and if you can get it there is quite a few examples of how they have played out positively:

  • A company called NTP is currently suing RIM (make the blackberries). First round in court gave NTP a $56M settlement and like a 8% royalty on EVERY blackberrry sold. RIM appealed and it’s still in court but last settlement offer was around $450 million from RIM to NTP to make them go away. i read RIM backed out and they are back in court again…

  • Small company shut Microsoft down a few years ago for 2 days when MS lost the patent infringement case. You bet MS paid them lots of $ for a royalty to get windows shipping again

  • Polaroid sued Kodak around 1975 for the instant camera thing - took 15+ years to work throught the courts but Kodak lost about $3Billion on the deal between damages and court orders to shut down several multi-million dollar factories they had just built.

Not bad for a piece of paper that cost about $20-30k to get in the first place. HOWEVER (if you’ve gotten this far you must be interested so I’ll add 1 more point) research shows a patent portfolio for a company is highly skewed, meaning that for say every 100 patents you have about 3 or 4 will actually be worth something, so it’s a high priced lottery game in some circumstances. This puts it back to a business strategy decision - where you competitors are, who they are, what your position in the innovation chain is, how long your innovations will be around and what everyone else is doing.

I hope that didn’t hurt too much…

From working with two guys who got a patent i learned a few things,it only helps keep others from making a complete copy,reword, redesign/change something slightly and you can get around a patent, You can spend a lot of time and money getting one, only to still be copied,look at how many products come out then less then a year there are twenty products just like it on the market.