On the surface, this does the opposite of justifying the cost of bikes. Founded in 2008, Winspace have been designing, building and racing carbon fiber bikes for over a decade. Based in Xiamen, China we have the advantage of being at the heart of the carbon fiber industry. Our international team brings expertise in engineering and design. hyper bike has a long history in the sport of BMX, including a National Pro Championship in 1993, delivered by Eric Carter. This early success helped to establish Hyper as a major player in BMX.
It observes that the Federal Circuit in Egyptian Goddess stated that it may be helpful for the court to point out various features of the claimed design as they relate to the accused design and the prior art. 543 F.3d at 680. It then cites Lanard Toys, Ltd. v. Dolgencorp, LLC, a case in which the Federal Circuit, reviewing the verbal construction of a design patent, approvingly concluded that the lower court had followed the Egyptian Goddess standard “to a tee”. Defendant submits that Lanard controls the present case, or at least provides more authoritative guidance than DePaoli and Reddy.
On October 20, 2021, the Court held a Markman hearing with respect to the claim construction to be applied to the design patents. The ‘842 and ’642 patents are both design patents which pertain to bicycles and, in particular, the ornamental design of two bicycles. The patents claim the design shown in their respective figures one through seven.
Because the proverbial picture is worth one thousand words, the Court attaches a demonstrative example of each claimed design. In analyzing a patent infringement action, the Court must 1) determine the meaning and scope of the patent claims asserted to be infringed and 2) compare the properly construed claims to the infringing device. Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 976 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (en banc), aff’d, 517 U.S. 370, 116 S.Ct.
Genuine profit margins for any industry can be hard to come by. Most industries like to keep this a closely guarded secret for obvious reasons. We have managed to get some general statistics on both the motorbike and cycling industries to compare just how much of the total sale price of the bikes is profit.
This is flipped on its head in the cycling world, with brands offering multiple different build kits and different frames to accommodate every type of budget, rider, and preference. Some bike brands have over 10 different sizes for the same bike and can even make the same bike out of different materials. That’s nearly three times the amount of motorbikes that were sold over the same period.
This is a great way to keep costs down as you only need to be able to manufacture one product over and over again. If you take the very best stock motorbikes built for track days and racing, these are going to put the price up towards the £/$/€30,000 mark. However, this is still a step below the bikes used by the professional riders. A MotoGP bike is a bespoke hyper mountain bike bit of kit, not something that you can just go and buy, and even if you could they have a price tag well north of £/$/€1.5 million. The parties disagree as to whether the Court should provide a verbal construction of the claimed design at all, or should instead advert to the pictorial representation thereof as shown in figures one through seven of each patent.
When considering complaint information, please take into account the company’s size and volume of transactions, and understand that the nature of complaints and a firm’s responses to them are often more important than the number of complaints. “CatEye is the leading manufacturer of cycle computers, lights and reflectors to cyclists in the world. Founded in 1954 in Osaka, Japan, CatEye has always been a leader in innovation and technology.”
The element-by-element approach to claim construction proposed by defendant, while perhaps not specifically proscribed, invites the kind of myopic, restrictive approach to the infringement analysis which the Federal Circuit has found to be “untethered from the ordinary observer inquiry” and therefore error. Ethicon, 796 F.3d at 1335 (citing Amini Innovation Corp. v. Anthony Cal., Inc., 439 F.3d 1365 (Fed Cir. 2006) ). See Egyptian Goddess, 543 F.3d at 680 (admonishing district courts to “recognize the risk” of a verbal description that may place undue emphasis on certain features in lieu of the design as a whole”). This case arises out of the alleged infringement by the defendant hyper bike (“Hyper” or “the defendant”) of two design patents held by the plaintiff, Fa-Hsing Lu (“the plaintiff”).
However, when you scratch beneath the surface you find that the overwhelming majority of bike sales are of lower-end bikes used by people all over the world for transport and leisure. The volume of high-end road bikes made from carbon fibre and designed in wind tunnels only makes up a very small proportion of the total sales. If you are in the market for a new road bike, you will know just how much they can cost these days. The current breed of superbikes can set you back just as much as a brand new motorbike.