Uh, do what exactly every time you fold the bike, Steve?
Attachment 579067
This is an OEM forward fit, not a consumer retrofit. It's a patented item Dahon is offering to other folding bike manufacturers - perhaps those many who thought they knew what they were doing when they attempted to copy Dahon's designs, or maybe a manufacturer who has picked up an infamous, unenviable reputation due to past frame failures.
I'm always curious about these comments about Dahon. When Dahon launched in the eighties folding bicycles were well established for many decades. They bought out a radical redesign of the folding bike to launch the company which they then abandoned and started making copies of european and other countries designs. None of the chinese manufacturers or the rebranded versions nowadays give any mention of IP of Dahon etc and most if not all seem to have greater weight capacity and lower frame failure rates. What exactly is the Dahon bit on folding bikes that they have IP for? When you look at fuji-ta the largest manufacturer of folding bikes in the world although not exclusively folding bikes they have many frame designs which seem to be resold as Dahon models in many markets.
I mean take this bike. Is it a Dahon or is it a fuji-ta?
HANMA8 - Tianjin Fuji-ta Bicycle Co.,Ltd.
How does the largest bike manufacturer in the world making very high quality state of the art bikes for big brands like Cannondale to their IP and many others get away with just ripping off Dahon designs? Was it jointly developed or does Dahon just buy the frames from them or a minor variation of the above?
It just feels to me there is a huge b*llsh*t factor to Dahon. Tern is now demonised for so called dishonesty and poor business practices but until Tern split from Dahon surely the same people with the same business practices were running Dahon and they would have learnt their business ethics from Dahon's founder.
Has Dahon ever successfully prosecuted a company for using its IP and what was it?
You only have to put in vintage folding bikes into google and look at the images to see a huge number of different designs from the sixties and seventies which cover most of the design principles for future folding bikes.
Another factor is their IP even any good with Dahon frequently mentioned for having frame failures. Maybe other manufacturers don't use their IP at all for the simple reason its rubbish. I say that because the device mentioned here looks rubbish and no substitute for making a decent frame in the first place.