Originally Posted by
Glynn Sluder
Good grief, now I have to wear the same bandanna that I sneak into Wal-mart with to my Specialized dealer? I'm glad I get to excercise a little more freedom than that.
Does anyone actually know the two people in the suit? Did they borrow the design? Is the giant Specialized THAT worried about them overtaking their sales or just making a point about copy infringement? Guess I don't know, but do know that the underdog isn't always the saint. Not saying it couldn't be the other way either.
I do know that my lbs owner is a great guy, has been nothing but generous and helpful and his products fit me and how I ride right now. Going to keep going there till those things change.
The people Spesh sued were former employees, and there's enough difference between their design and the "affected" Spesh design that they were dead in the water. Heard the other day, after $400,000 in legal fees by the defendants and $1.5M by Spesh, the copyright infringement charge fell apart, and ONE of the two was found liable for 'breach of contract'; award to Spesh: one...dollar.
Poetic justice at its best.
Someone else mentioned that "big business" bikes HAVE to be good, otherwise they wouldn't BE big business; whatever. At some point in their growth, they had a serious advantage -- now, it's just riding the wave from that, for the most part. Spesh or Trek are big enough to cover a wider customer base, so they absorb a bigger slice of the market. I'll ALWAYS pick Santa Cruz, Jamis, Kona, or some smaller brand over the big boys, simply because of the passion that drives the smaller brands. Others can chuckle over the 'big-biz slam' tendencies, but really -- show me a big business that got there with clean hands. Spesh sure didn't, jumping on the Horst Link patent and breaking everybody else's balls over imagined infringements ever since; Trek basically squeezed LeMond out of the bike business because of "Lance-olitics". GM broke the backs of streetcars 70+ years ago, Standard Oil was a ruthless demon in their ascendancy....