This device has been patented (number NL 1019905) by
Dutch inventor Jan Helderman. My newspaper had it in their weekly column “Uitgedacht” (Thought out). As I wrote in the thread ‘BC with handle’, the inventor calls it a cyke.
Klaas Bil
It’s like a Segway! But cheaper!
And it wouldn’t be a BC wheel anymore with a handle.
why do they let such stupid stuff get patented?
its kind of counterintuitive realy, since patents were designed to encourage creativity.
imagine if sombody had patented the splined unicycle hub?
thered be no profile, no onza, no kh, no qu-ax.
on a side note who made the first one?
i know dm made the first production spilned hub, but who made the first prototype?
people were playing with these for years, using what was essentialy the handlebars and forks from a bmx.
how does one go about proving that there was prior art in the public domain? and having the patent invalidated, i suspect you need a lawyer. we all know that this didnt invent the thing but how could we invalidate the patent?..bascicly we cant, without paying millions in lawyers fees.
this is a clasic example of why patent law sucks, and would you beleive that the us is trying to extend patents to include software and mathamatical methods,ideas and business methods.
Re: The cyke has been invented
In article <evilewan.wej93@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com>,
evilewan@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com (evilewan) wrote:
> this is a clasic example of why patent law sucks, and would you beleive
> that the us is trying to extend patents to include software and
> mathamatical methods,ideas and business methods.
And plant species.
Liam
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No qu-ax?? No qu-ax?? I don’t know if I could live in a world with no qu-ax!!
do they even know how ridiculous that name is? Is it “quacks” or “cue-axe”.
Probably the last one.
I haven’t looked anything up, but I imagine all the early manufacturers of splined axles have patents on their designs, including Profile.
These patents, assuming they exist, protect their owners to a certain extent, and encourage competitors to “innovate” (sorry to use Microsoft’s word) rather than just copy. When they make their own designs, they may come up with better ones.
Yes, the patent system is flawed, but that does not mean we should do away with it. I think there will always be gray areas, impossible to define, when it comes to “new ideas” so it will be hard to make such laws perfect.
could it be possible for the unicyclist community to set up equivalents
of Gnu or such licences that exist for community software?
bear
It’s an interesting thought. Maybe it could work. If not, it would be because in Open Source software the user and developer worlds have large overlaps. So most if not all developers have an interest themselves in better software, unlike e.g. Profile who do their development for profit as opposed to for riding pleasure per se. (But maybe this is an old-world idea, similar to what Bill Gates must have thought when he failed to anticipate the rise of Linux.) Also, software seems more amenable to many small ‘home-made’ enhancements than e.g. splined hubs.
Klaas Bil
suppose I had a design for a unicycle part, or assembly,or …
(not an unlikely event: in fact I have…)
I could patent the thing … a cumbersome process…
or publish it under public licence so that it could be amended, augmented
and, who knows? end up in a real thing being built… who knows?
my goal would be to have my dreams come true not to become a professional
inventor.
bear
Must… buy… cyke…
Wait i have a better idea! I’ll Build one!
If i use that crappy chrome torker and get a spare frame, i’ll just follow my blueprint. I’ll need a good hacksaw and a hammer or something to bend the frame.
Good luck. I would look out for the extra bit of axel that will be sticking out of each side. That would not be nice on the legs.
Yeah… i may just cut those off… but if i do that means no turning back, you know?
But i don’t expect it will be easy to turn while riding anyway…
Re: The cyke has been invented
XWonka <XWonka@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com> wrote:
>Wait i have a better idea! I’ll Build one!
>If i use that crappy chrome torker and get a spare frame, i’ll just
>follow my blueprint. I’ll need a good hacksaw and a hammer or something
>to bend the frame.
> ±---------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Attachment filename: cyke uni.jpg |
> |Download attachment: http://www.unicyclist.com/attachment/171339|
> ±---------------------------------------------------------------+
It might be easier to just use an old bicycle front fork and weld a
couple of flat steel pieces with right angles in them. One should be
able to spread the fork enough to get a front bicycle wheel into the
axle slots of the fork.
On top of the fork’s head tube, one could mount either a bicycle handle
bar or a unicycle seat.
Sincerely,
Ken Fuchs <kfuchs@winternet.com>
patent law are incredibly flawed, the whole system needs to be completely overhauled. id gladly get rid of the whole thing.
patents are a pretty bad thing realy because they are designed to create monopolies ( are there any good reasons to have monopolies?).
mr watt had the chance to patent mains electricity and charge a royalty fee for evey WATT of electricity produced, he didnt thogh, because he was a good person and not an evil greedy cash whore.
verry occasionaly sombody like mr dyson inventssomething clever and gets rich, because of the patent laws. but then the rivals just develop something similar that dosent quite infringe the patent.
if you invent something and want it to be free for all mankind all you have to do is share it with people, when there is prior art in the public domain you cant patent something.(many patents are granted nonetheless but they are unenforcable and will usual be revoked if the patent holder tries to sue anybody.)
if somebody out there designs some parts they could release them under the creative commons licence:
its not the same as a patent thogh.
making a clone of somebodies design is just rude, and i wouldnt expect the world to treat me kindly if i set up a company that made exact replicas of profiles designs.
but if i made an axle that was compatible with the profiles, but stronger. i wouldnt expect any hassle.
however if profile does own a patent on their spline pattern then they could sue me for ever penny i owned. just for making an axle that was compatible with their cranks.
Patent low is also a good (partial) protection AGAINST monopolies. Without patent low there would be no financial reasons for small startups or individual inventors to create anything; because, as soon as it was proved marketable, the already existing monopolies would immediately put the newcomer out of business with their copies.
Another example of where patent law benefits: if it weren’t for patent law our best painkillers might still be aspirin and morphine. It costs lots of money to develop new drugs, and without some protection, there would be little to no financial incentive for new drug development.
I’m not saying that patent law or it’s practice are anywhere near perfect, but it is of substantial benefit. Ever been glad you had a Cresent wrench handy? Vise Grip pliers? Ever use Velcro? These patents have now expired, but without the patents the products might never have been available at all - brand name or otherwise.
.duaner.
Re: The cyke has been invented
Let’s see some more unicycling patents! Most of them have probably
expired long ago or were too trivial or had prior art. I can’t imagine
many fundamental parts of a unicycle being patentable with the
expectation that such patents could be proved (or have been proved)
valid in court.
duaner <duaner@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com> wrote:
>Patent law is also a good (partial) protection AGAINST monopolies.
>Without patent low there would be no financial reasons for small
>startups or individual inventors to create anything; because, as soon as
>it was proved marketable, the already existing monopolies would
>immediately put the newcomer out of business with their copies.
Monopolies acquire all encompassing patent portfolios and are the only
ones rich enough to pay lawyers to defend or defeat patents in the
courts.
The US patent system is out of control. Amazon was given a patent on
their single click checkout. Its amazing how many obvious patents are
awarded even though patents can’t be given for anything that a
practitioner in the art could come up with in a reasonable amount of time
or if prior art exits! I complained to my Congressman, but he responded
that the US Patent Office is not doing anything wrong. That’s not what
I wanted to hear from him.
Software patents shouldn’t even be given out. Software has adequate
copyright protection.
>Another example of where patent law benefits: if it weren’t for patent
>law our best pain killers might still be aspirin and morphine. It costs
>lots of money to develop new drugs, and without some protection, there
>would be little to no financial incentive for new drug development.
Monopolies own almost all patents, so there is little incentive for
startups or small companies to invest in technologies that are taken
away or traded away from them by huge companies.
>I’m not saying that patent law or it’s practice are anywhere near
>perfect, but it is of substantial benefit. Ever been glad you had a
>Crescent wrench handy? Vise Grip pliers? Ever use Velcro? These
>patents have now expired, but without the patents the products might
>never have been available at all - brand name or otherwise.
To the contrary, these products were on the market before the US Patent
Office went crazy approving patents just to support itself.
Now, individual inventors almost always have to assign all patent rights
to the company they work for and the big companies acquire other
companies sometimes only for the patents they own. So, the largest
company in an industry ends up owning most of the patents and can really
choke of the competition and become a monopoly.
The only benefit of the US patent system is the fact that patents expire
in 17 years, far sooner than copyright’s 75 years. Of course, even some
patent holders agreed that the 17 year limit which seemed to work well a
century ago, just doesn’t make sense in today’s fast pace of technology.
Many patent holders agreed that the patent expiration time is far too
long now and suggest expirations of 3-5 years so as not to unduly slow
down progress.
Sincerely,
Ken Fuchs <kfuchs@winternet.com>
you explanation of patent law pretty much sums up the reasons we have patent law. if it worked like you said then that’d be fine.
but unfortunatley it actualy does the complete oposite of what its intended to do.
take pharmacuticals for example,
most of (like 95% or something) of the pharmacutical market is served by only two or three companies, glaxo-welcome, bayer, and unilever(correct me if i’m wrong, i could be.)
they own basicly all the patents to everything pharmacutical, and licence those patents to each other.
now there was a big fuss a few years ago when an indian company started producing cancer treatment drugs without a licence agreement from the big boys.
needles to say they were filling a gap in the market selling the drugs at lower prices, because the glaxo-welcome et all, were charging extortionatly high prices for the drugs.
there was a big hoo haa, and the big boys took the indian company to court. however it looked like the indian company was going to win on a human rights issue, so instead of letting the case set a global precident the big companies setled out of court.
“so what” you may say. but by doing so the pharmacutical companies kept their power to sell these druggs at prices way beyond their actual value.
and the real icing on the cake is that cancer druggs research actualy get funded by the government and charities.
a good example of pharmacuticl research that dosent rely on patent law is the human genome project, one of the biggest research projects ever undertaken.
true, the intent behind patent law is good, its just a shame it dosent actualy do what it says on the tin.
just to keep this on topic, if sombody had a patent on say “method for atatching breaks to a unicycle frame”
they’d be free to charge royalties on every unicycle frame with break mounts ever made, if they wanted they could set those royalties at $100 per frame.
that would suck. and patents have been awarded for much more trivial things
i’d say that the only reason the world actualy puts up with it is that patens expire eventualy.