Originally Posted by
icepick_trotsky
I'll confess to a) being a lawyer, and b) knowing basically nothing about intellectual property law, as it's well outside my practice area.
We all know the story about about Suntour's 1964 patent on the slant-parallelogram derailleur, how Shimano waited decades for the patent to expire, then incorporate it into their early SIS systems, and eventually crushed Suntour and conquered the world.
So why does it seem like this sort of patent-related exclusivity didn't happen with other cycling technologies? Campy and Suntour both came out with indexing (though less successful) right after Shimano, and Campy introduced Ergos right after STI shifters. Bottom bracket interfaces, hub types, etc all seem to move across the industry in one big sweep now, across all the major manufacturers. What gives?
Note Shimano was DEVELOPING their SIS system before the patent ran out, then jumped, Fast!
Index shifting had quite a bit of "prior art", if you look at what Shimano did that was patentable, it was not much till the integrated brake/shift lever and Hyperglide system.
Suntour and Campagnolo's index systems were patent conflict free of the other players.
Campagnolo Ergo shifters had paintable features, but dodged the Shimano patents.
I beg to differ on bottom bracket and crank attachment standards, plenty of unique systems, and a few "open" systems that never were fully adopted, the "not invented here" syndrome. The latest is a threaded standard that Argonaut is a developer in, that may be semi open source.
The earlier threading systems were Nationality based, no real patentable or patented features.
The Shimano freehub was a rework of much earlier efforts, not much new. That is why Suntour and Campagnolo moved in with no problem.
I do find it interesting that SRAM is interchangeable with Shimano somewhat. Campagnolo being very proud, probably just did not want to "copy"
Axle diameters and locknut widths are interesting, here a practical "gentleman's agreement" has taken hold.
Even the now common 11 speed dimensions are so close that interchangeability is back, not perfect, but tolerable.
The jury is out on disc brakes and through axle types… there are ISO standards but time will tell if they will stick.
Volagi disc brake road bikes tried 130mm rear wheel spacing, now moving to 135 as the parts makers have spoken, for example.
I think there is more in flux than ever before.
Rotor is bringing out a hydraulic shifting system, the patents on cable and electronic shifting are so tied up there was really no where to go but different.
BTW, Campagnolo has patented a brake hydraulic cylinder system where the components are buried inside the handlebar…. Campagnolo handlebars? Repechage predicts...