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DW Split Pivot Suspension System

16K views 119 replies 35 participants last post by  rick watts 
#1 · (Edited)
Just saw this posted up on Pinkbike, a new DW suspension ...

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/2007-Dave-Weagle-launches-new-suspension-system-SPLIT-PIVOT.html or right to the Dave's new site: www.split-pivot.com

Not sure what this will do to the existing DW Link bikes or whether it will be a next-gen type suspension linkage. I wonder if this linkage system will be picked up by Iron Horse or other bike mftrs...

Perhaps those with the engineering knowledge can post up their thoughts.

Check it out.

Hey Dave
I am available to test ride some prototypes, as would anyone who has been on any of the DW-Link bikes.
 
#77 ·
DeeEight said:
And you accuse me of contradicting myself... LOL...
Wrong again, there is no contradiction there. Filing date is used to determine what is prior art and what is not. First to invent is used to determine who gets the patent to the same subject matter.

There is no point in arguing patent law with someone who does not have a full understanding of that law and have such contempt of said law to begin with. BTW, I did not accuse you of anything; I merely asked a question.
 
#78 ·
And you apparently don't have a full understanding of how flawed the patent system (the US one especially) is. You can quote what's written in the acts and laws ad nauseum but the problem you don't seem willing to accept, or admit to anyways is that its no longer being run the way it was intended when it was created, and that patents for inventions already INVENTED and with widespread prior art still keep being granted to people/companies and this concentric axle pivot is just the latest such example.

See the Felt Equilink patent for another recent example, totally ripped off from a Kavik bike design that was shown at Interbike several years ago, and who's "inventors" at Felt had visited the actual inventor, looked at his design, decided they didn't wanna license it because they realized they could go and patent it themselves and claim it as their own.

This all came out here on mtbr only a couple months ago, and there's a multi-page thread on it, with photos of Kavik's bike at Interbike several years ago. Its publically known prior art and yet Felt claims to have invented the design first. Or in another example that's become publically known on mtbr also, the actual inventor of inertia-valve shocks, is currently offering inertia-valve shocks for bikes hoping and in fact begging for specialized to try and stop him, so he can take them to court at largely their expense, to have their patents for stuff they didn't invent (nor did anyone at Fox or Rockshox or anywhere else before working for specialized) in the first place.

Both those are examples of "first to invent" not seeming to matter to the USPTO nor first to file either. They still issued patents on the same technology/inventions to other parties.
 
#79 · (Edited)
I rest my case!

DeeEight said:
And you apparently don't have a full understanding of how flawed the patent system (the US one especially) is. You can quote what's written in the acts and laws ad nauseum but the problem you don't seem willing to accept, or admit to anyways is that its no longer being run the way it was intended when it was created, and that patents for inventions already INVENTED and with widespread prior art still keep being granted to people/companies and this concentric axle pivot is just the latest such example.

See the Felt Equilink patent for another recent example, totally ripped off from a Kavik bike design that was shown at Interbike several years ago, and who's "inventors" at Felt had visited the actual inventor, looked at his design, decided they didn't wanna license it because they realized they could go and patent it themselves and claim it as their own.

This all came out here on mtbr only a couple months ago, and there's a multi-page thread on it, with photos of Kavik's bike at Interbike several years ago. Its publically known prior art and yet Felt claims to have invented the design first. Or in another example that's become publically known on mtbr also, the actual inventor of inertia-valve shocks, is currently offering inertia-valve shocks for bikes hoping and in fact begging for specialized to try and stop him, so he can take them to court at largely their expense, to have their patents for stuff they didn't invent (nor did anyone at Fox or Rockshox or anywhere else before working for specialized) in the first place.

Both those are examples of "first to invent" not seeming to matter to the USPTO nor first to file either. They still issued patents on the same technology/inventions to other parties.
I hear what you are saying but mistakes happen just like in any industry. But just because mistakes are made doesn't mean the entire system is flawed. It's like saying, IH is a really bad company because a few frames were defective. The issue in the generalization of these incidents.

Nobody is perfect and examiners are people and people makes mistakes. Hence mechanisms are in place to fix such mistakes. It's called customer service in the bike industry. ;)
 
#81 ·
I have a few questions here that people may be able to elaborate on.

The more I read of DWs post it seems he just wants people to get out and have fun on a well thought out / engineered system

So say a little company ripped it off or had a "similar idea" would he go after them like a big company (say specialized) who had infringed on it.

How would you quantify what it would cost to license the system .
 
#83 ·
_dw said:
The Yeti bike has the brake attached to the chainstay. It is a single pivot for acceleration and braking. It is not a Split Pivot design, but it easily could be retrofitted to use the Split Pivot technology, probably with some nice results.
Here's a quote from another thread. The description was taken from some Eurobike website.

The rear pivots rotate around the rear wheel axle and the rear brake attaches to the chain stay - this isolates braking forces.

Regardless of caliper mounting location, isn't this technically a split pivot or is the caliper location tied to the patent?
 
#84 ·
wormvine said:
Here's a quote from another thread. The description was taken from some Eurobike website.

The rear pivots rotate around the rear wheel axle and the rear brake attaches to the chain stay - this isolates braking forces.

Regardless of caliper mounting location, isn't this technically a split pivot or is the caliper location tied to the patent?
If the brake is attached to the chainstay, then there is nothing that the design can do to "isolate braking forces". It will perform identically to any other single pivot bike (with the same main pivot location) under braking. The person that wrote the information on the other site was just confused, thats all.
 
#85 · (Edited)
_dw said:
The Yeti bike has the brake attached to the chainstay. It is a single pivot for acceleration and braking. It is not a Split Pivot design, but it easily could be retrofitted to use the Split Pivot technology, probably with some nice results.
my brain read chainstay as seatstay after seeing the pivot around the axle and the caliper mounting tabs above the seatstay. i guess without seeing the frame from the non drive side it's hard to discern exactly the chainstay/seatstay/pivot interface.

if the the caliper is indeed mounted to the chainstay, i would assume the chainstay is on the inside of the seatstay with the wheel mounted to the chainstay on the non drive side, yet the drive side would have the wheel mounted to the seatstay as there is no drive side chainstay. i am anything but an engineer but this just seems "wrong" for some reason. any issues with this?
 
#86 ·
Its using a 12mm thru axle and the seatstay has the dropout and derailleur hanger on the driveside. Nothing really unusual about a single-side swingarm, its been tried before on mountain bikes. The proper way to do it though would be to put the disc rotor behind the cogset (or run a gearbox) on a proprietary hub and just run a chaintstay/seatstay on the drive side and get rid of the non-drive side setup. The only reason to do it as Yeti is trying is to eliminate chainslap on the chainstay and prevent the derailleur body from slapping into the chainstay at certain suspension compression points (as all horst-link bikes suffer from, even Ellsworth ones where the pivot is as close to the axle as it can get really).
 
#87 ·
Incidently, anyone who was at Interbike in 1994 (or has the jan 1995 issue of MBA) should recall seeing the GT show bike for the euro future-bike competition, which was a yellow/blue composite version of the LTS design with composite wheels and very large hollow axles (like 3-4" diameter) that used a split pivot dropout (the seatstay and chainstay pivoted around the axle). This was a very public showing of this split-pivot idea and any decent patent lawyer would be smart enough to present this evidence for the idea as being "obvious" if it came down to a patent fight over Trek or DW or anyone else claiming to have invented it first.
 
#89 ·
DeeEight said:
Incidently, anyone who was at Interbike in 1994 (or has the jan 1995 issue of MBA) should recall seeing the GT show bike for the euro future-bike competition, which was a yellow/blue composite version of the LTS design with composite wheels and very large hollow axles (like 3-4" diameter) that used a split pivot dropout (the seatstay and chainstay pivoted around the axle). This was a very public showing of this split-pivot idea and any decent patent lawyer would be smart enough to present this evidence for the idea as being "obvious" if it came down to a patent fight over Trek or DW or anyone else claiming to have invented it first.
Actually, this bike is NOT a Split Pivot design, and my patent application clearly references it.
 
#93 ·
Dankdhr said:
Hey DW,

Hate to rain on your parade, but Crestone Peaks utilized a "split pivot" on their bikes in the early 90s - have you searched the prior art??
Crestone... THAT's the brand I was trying to remember the name of.... now to find one of the pictures of that frame. I seem to recall MBA reviewed a couple of them. I'm sure dw will come back and say because there wasn't a disc mount on the seatstay its not a split pivot, but that might not matter to the patent office now that they're more stringently applying the tests for obviousness again (as they were doing thirty years ago) thanks to a recent us supreme court decision. Its pretty obvious to me as a non-bike designer than if you take a bike with rim brakes mounted to the seatstays and a split pivot, that the simple modern update is to put the disc mount also on the seatstay with the split pivot. And the whole test of obviousness is supposed to be what a reasonably intelligent person in the same field could think of also. If its occurring to the non-bike designers, then chances are the bike designers will figure it out as obvious also.
 
#94 ·
any updates on this?

It's been a while, and I haven't seen any updates on the Split Pivot, i.e., which bikes/bike companies will be utilising it.

The Split Pivot website said "late 2007...early 2008." It's 2nd quarter 2008 now and there's no news yet...

Anybody?
 
#95 ·
rigel said:
It's been a while, and I haven't seen any updates on the Split Pivot, i.e., which bikes/bike companies will be utilising it.

The Split Pivot website said "late 2007...early 2008." It's 2nd quarter 2008 now and there's no news yet...

Anybody?
I've got some AWESOME updates to share in the near future, but I'm going to wait it out just a liiiittle longer..

There are lots of really good things happening in Split Pivot world right now.
 
#101 ·
Speedub.Nate said:
Check out this blog posting:

http://thisjustin.bicycling.com/2007/06/08_trek_fuel_ex.html

"...I asked Trek, "So, what's the deal?" They told me Dave Weagle came by Trek to try and get them (Trek) to license Split Pivot several months ago. At that time, according to Trek, they (Trek) had been developing ABP for about a year. Neither party new (sic) of the other's design... "
Correct me if my logic is flawed. Treks APB is very similar to DW's split pivot design. DW stated split pivot will be marketed to lower end bikes while DW Link will remain the company's premier rear suspension platform. So a $8K Trek fuel will still have an inferior suspension to my $2K Iron Horse MKIII? Also note that Trek will only place ABP on the higher end Fuel bikes. The lower end models get a different suspension.
 
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