Originally Posted by
chagzuki
I guess I'm conflating the two, not understanding either particularly well.
It says on wikipedia "Brompton Bicycle's legal actions against Neobike/Grace Gallant have all been brought on the basis of copyright- and industrial design-law". Perhaps in that instance copyright referred only to the reproduction of Brompton's illustrations in the manual?
I am not at all familiar with the case you're talking about. My guess would be either that non-Brompton parties used Brompton marketing word for word or at least similar enough to scuttle the deal, or that Brompton 1. had described their fold very succinctly somewhere and 2. had a very shrewd barrister...
Also not familiar with Dahon's integrated headset design, but... if whatever you design is designed to work with stuff other than specifically the dahon design, I'd think you would not get into trouble. If there's some proprietary interface or measurement involved, it could get tricky.
You could certainly do a one-off for yourself and stay out of trouble, but if you start offering it commercially, that's where the trouble could arise.
Another course might be to get a prototype out there and then see if Dahon is willing to buy the design from you. If only there were someone on this forum who had some kind of in with Dahon so you could get it seen by the right people... *cough* Thor *cough*