Patents and Prior Art

Some of the brightest and most influential minds in our world cut their teeth as patent clerks.  Clara Barton, Thomas Jefferson, and of course Albert Einstein.  As they would tell you, patent eligibility hinges on the invention's separation from "Prior Art" and it's non-obviousness.  In other words, patentable ideas should not be an evolution of an existing idea, but something new- an intellectual leap.  It is conceded that practically all inventions arise from existing knowledge.  Kepler could not have deduced the solar system without Euclidean geometry.  One idea builds on the last.  But within the bike industry I see market greed and protectionism driving patent applications- and surprisingly, they are approved again and again.  In both bicycle suspension and saddles, the areas of my interest lately, there are plentiful examples. Pages and pages of obtuse language fill these patents and intimidate potential trespassers (and probably the patent clerks themselves).  But where is the content?  With Specialized's "FSR" (bought from Horst which is actually a Macpherson strut) patent expiring soon and Dave Weagle's ongoing lawsuits with Giant and Trek over alleged patent infringements, it's a relevant topic.

Let's look at two patents, both filed and approved at the end of the 1990's by two of the largest American bicycle companies- Specialized, with their saddle with cut-out, and Trek/Bontrager with a normal, padded saddle.

In patent EP1024992 A1 Specialized covers their version of the "prior art": "Bicycle seats, or saddles, have traditionally been designed with a convex profile such that they fit between the body's ischial tuberosities ("sit bones") with a small protrusion tucked up in the crotch."

Except, of course, every saddle on a cruiser bike ever, and, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of saddles ever made, racing saddles being only a small minority thereof.

The meat of their patent application (the rest is legal jargon necessary to describe the general shape and construction of any bicycle saddle) lies in the explanation of the groove: "Yet another aspect of the present invention includes a groove with dimensions approximately equal to the dimensions of a human body ischial tuberosities such that pressure is reduced on the internal pudendal arteries."

Let's look back to a patent by Frank A. Hollenbeck in 1897, almost exactly 100 years prior,  regarding designing for these differential pressures on a bicycle saddle:  "The horn, and particularly the laterally flaring enlargements thereof,  afford considerable support to the rider, and the bifurcation of said horn and the aperture a' prevent injury to his overlying parts." 

Maybe it's not as explicitly presented in the Grey's Anatomy kind of way but to me that is saying exactly the same thing.
 
It's thanks to that other aforementioned patent that I easily found Hollenbeck's original idea.  Legendary Keith Bontrager, already quoted in this blog, included it as reference to his patent US6149230 A. His claims for the new Trek saddle are:
1. A bicycle saddle that includes a novel contoured upper seating surface which primarily supports the rider's ischeal tuberosities and thereby reduces the pressure placed on the perineum is disclosed.

Bontrager:

OK, now, see...umm, almost every other performance saddle ever made? Like, you know what I'm saying?





2. In particular, the seating surface of the saddle includes laterally spaced apart right and left posterior support surfaces for supporting primarily the ... ischeal tuberosities of the bicycle rider. The ...posterior support surfaces are formed by a ... V-shaped open space extending forwardly from a rear edge...of the saddle and terminating at an apex, and also formed by a central, longitudinally extending depression extending from the apex forwardly to the anterior portion of the saddle.

So, what Specialized said.

3. The invention disclosed herein includes a variation wherein the foam padding is comprised of a first pad and a second pad designed especially for female riders. The first pad, which is comparatively quite soft, covers a central portion of the anterior portion of the shell. The second pad, which provides cushioning but is relatively firmer than the first pad, covers the posterior portion of the shell and also surrounds the first pad thereby covering the extreme side portions and extreme forward portion of the anterior portion of the shell.  

Wait, let me guess: "The horn, and particularly the laterally flaring enlargements thereof,  afford considerable support to the rider, and the bifurcation of said horn and the aperture a' prevent injury to (her) overlying parts."

Fortunately I don't think there's been much aggressive defense of these particular patents; Trek has even allowed theirs to lapse (they came out with a new model I guess).  I could go on and on, but frankly these pretend inventions that are somehow awarded patents are so numerous in the bike industry that it gets quite boring. In fact, if you browse through Bontrager's thorough listing of references, you'll find 2 more saddles with perineal cutouts patented in 1897 and 1899.  Bicycle Retailer summed up my feelings very concisely in what I hope was a subtly ironic jab: "Cane Creek's Aheadset patent is due to expire in the fall of 2010. Additional patents, which are refinements of the original patent, like Tange Seiki's Zero Stack patent, will remain active after 2010."

It's also interesting that the US patent office, as of this spring, switched its "First-to-invent" policy to "first-to-apply."  The obvious intent is to eliminate the long and costly legal battles between contradicting parties.  However, if prior art is already so loosely interpreted, would not a "first-to-apply" policy make it even easier to patent previously un-patented prior art as new?

For all the dogfighting between DW and Trek over the "Active Braking Pivot" and "Split Pivot" systems, couldn't a patent clerk back in 2006 or whenever just have said, "Look, what you both have designed is a nice way of integrating a floating brake into a bicycle suspension design.  Sure, "he said, she said", one of you probably stole this idea, but let's take a step back here.  There were previously both bicycle suspensions and floating brakes.  They weren't intrinsically or even superficially hardly any different than this.  But hey, it's a little lighter and cleaner than a real floater, and at least you made it partially better than a single pivot, thank god, so kudos for that.  We have a word for incremental improvement here at the Patent Office:  Engineering.  Call us back when you come up with something new.  And would you stop fighting about it?" 


Here's an actual innovation.