Originally Posted by pbd

Wow, yeah, this is definitely not a point in their favor here. A sketch, which led directly to a patent and an integral piece of technology on their product, was done >2 months before they gave notice to Specialized. And he even admits to using his Specialized company email account and Specialized-produced sales reports for Volagi's gain.


The first sketch that led to the final Volagi concept – when was that completed?
That sketch was done on January 31st 2010. It was done at home – a kind of back-of-the-napkin concept piece. It didn’t have any paint or geometry, it was just taking a picture of a bike on side-view and mocking it up to create something visual and we ended up patenting the LongBow Flex stay. At the time we didn’t even know if something like that could be patented. It was a novel idea, but I honestly didn’t think it could be patented. A separated top tube and stuff like that had been done many times, but we came through with a very innovative idea where the top tube is connected to the seat tube only.

What are Specialized’s exact allegations against Volagi?
They initially claimed that I had in my possession some “sales call reports”, which I passed on to my wife, as she was joining our company (Volagi). I admit, I don’t think that was the right thing to do looking back, but Specialized generated thousands of these call reports all the time; it was just a matter of trying to learn about the issues we might have when starting a new company. I realized “oh, I shouldn’t be doing this” and I stopped it. But, they filed with the Court then went back to decide on what they could actually sue us for. Later on, they discovered I used the internal email systems to send a few notes to (Volagi) vendors, so they said I was using company resources. I also had a copy of a project plan that I was working on, which they said were trade secrets; I had nothing on carbon layup, specification or materials. They just say, “your bike looks strikingly similar to our bike”. Yeah, to a non-technical observer they all look the same.


Let me put it this way: if I did exactly the same thing with a piece of semiconductor technology today, my employer would sue me too, and would probably win, because that design would belong to my employer. But we still don't know all the details of this case yet, we'll see how it turns out in a couple of weeks.