Brompton how light can it go

[berlinonaut]

IP laws are complicated and depends what areas you want protected. Design, folding, functional, etc etc. Not forgetting you have to apply worldwide coverage too. If they don’t cover a particular country, then that country have every right to copy. That is the law. I’m not here to encourage pilferage. Am sure Brom got good advise its not worth to cover China. Then which country 360 wish to sell is beyond our discussion here.

That doc you attached is just a general news. You and me do not know the details enough to make a judgement. Nothing is considered cast in stone as the defendant can appeal until everything is exhausted. Then that is the judgement.

There are the Brompton patents that have indeed expired about 20 years ago. Then there's the area of copyright which includes general intellectual property. The actual case against Cedech referred to the unique and iconic shape of the Brompton that is an essential part of the brand. It is basically in the same area that the form and shape of a small Coca-Cola bottle would be protected and Coca-Cola could (and probably would) sue anyone using this shape for a competing product. In no ways it would be forbidden to sell a similar product that does look different and the same is true for Brompton. They tried to sue Dahon for the Curl and pulled back before a court did decide on that matter as it seemed that the Curl would be different enough. They sucessfully sued Merc for selling their Bromton clones in Europe under different names and in different countries. They sucessfully sued Neobike before for doing the same thing.

Suing someone in Asia is a different story, as the perception of copyright and intellectual property may be different and it is very expensive and of unclear success to get lawyers. The more as the issue happens in a variety of Asian countries and the companies pop up and close quickly plus they subcontract, label and sub-brand, so it is already a problem to identify the company or person that is responsible. And if you have managed to do that then you need to get hold of them and then to bring them to court and succeed there. They may already have permutated in the meantime, so it is a race that you can't win. Basically a hydra with many heads: Even if you finally manage to chop one off after much effort ten others may have grown while you were occupied with the first one. I'd assume that's why Brompton until now do not do legal action in Asia as far as I know - waste of time and money. Not because they believe what the clone guys are doing would be legal - it is not. Europe is a bit safer ground in that regard, way less hydra-effect here and way safer ground for legal action.
Land Rover sucessfully sued Landwind (a Chinese car brand) in China for copying their design (I think it was the Discovery they copied). So even in China it is clear that this kind of behaviour is far from being legal.

What is clear is that basically all Brompton clones are a direct or indirect result from the licensing deal Brompton hat with Neobike between 1992 and 2002 and the illegal actions Neobike took afterwards - and this is also the reason why these clones even today are typically based on a 30 year old state of the Brompton - the one that was licensed to Neobike at the beginning of the nineties.

Regarding the Chedech case: In the article there is a link to more detailled legal documents and if you google you will find way more easily w/o any effort. The ruling is not really complicated to understand.

Apart from any legal topics I personally do not buy copycat stuff, that is a question of morale, but also rational: For one because I have respect for inventors and no respect for copycats and secondly because the copycats typically only exist because they offer at a lower price which comes at a cost: They simply copy w/o understanding the construction plus - as the price is their only justification of existence - the quality is typically way lower as they have to take shortcuts to get the price down and they are always lagging behind the development of the original product as they only copy but do not develop. This is true for a fake Rolex, this is true for a fake iPhone or fake Airpods and it is true for a fake Brompton. If you only look at the price you end up getting a cheap product that on first look may look similar but one that probably is of worse quality as well, sometimes to the amount of being dangerous or unusable for the intended purpose. Definitively one that has close to zero resale value, a high risk of not so obvious issues and differences to the original and a very questionable longterm quality. So in the end you loose way more money than what you believe to safe upfront.

 

[novetan]

I gonna cut to the chase. You uphold IP, and yes we shld. Then you should not even advise me the wt of steel knowing my intention to build up using ti parts which basically these parts are replicas. You even provide source of info UFB Len Rubin.

Overall its an attempt making yourself sitting on high horse. I hv nothing further much to add.

 

[berlinonaut]

I gonna cut to the chase. You uphold IP, and yes we shld. Then you should not even advise me the wt of steel knowing my intention to build up using ti parts which basically these parts are replicas. You even provide source of info UFB Len Rubin.

Overall its an attempt making yourself sitting on high horse. I hv nothing further much to add.

Information is free and it is good that this is the case. Also it it up to you what you do or don't do - it is your responsibility, not mine. It seems that you only accept confirmation for whatever you plan to do (which you did not outline) and see any information that does not confirm your plans in any way as a personal attack (which is a bit of a weird attitude in my eyes). Also you better get your homework done in terms of information before you start your next riduculous attempt of an ad-hominem attack. Len Rubin created and sold a small handful of so called "Superbromptons" based on normal Brompton bikes starting in the late 90ies and around 2000 started his approach to develop the UFB (which never made it to production). This was 20 years ago. He got in touch with Brompton at that time and - against his own expectations - they were interested in what he was doing and in no way stopped him. In fact the titanium Brompton parts, coming to market only in 2005, may be an indirect result of Len Rubins showcase of the UFB. I am not on a high horse - I just know my stuff which seems not to be the case with you. Confusing facts with personal belief, wishful thinking and avoiding uncomfortable truths to justify silly behaviour is not too helpful here.

 

[novetan]

Granted that Rubins collabration with brom was legal, you are muddling the issue. You shld detest those that attempt to build up their own Ti bike with no collabration with Brom. So my pt is why provide me the info even knowing my intention.

I just state the fact you are carrying the bike 100 steps twice a day. And I said not everyone can be like you. No malicious intent. I have to give it to you you r a strong man. You merely self inflict yourself that I attempt a ad-hominem. How ridiculous. You are indeed a confused person.

 

[Gunk]

 

[dodgy]

One positive thing this thread has driven home and it's the depth of expertise and knowledge available around here*!

*from some members

 

[All uphill]

I like the weight-saving spelling in parts of this thread, cutting out those unccssry vwls!

 

[Tenkaykev]

Speaking of Titanium and Brommies, I see a 2018 CHPT3 has just sold for £5,600 on Ebay, 24 bids in total.

 

[dodgy]

I like the weight-saving spelling in parts of this thread, cutting out those unccssry vwls!

I usually put as much effort into reading those kind of posts as the poster did in writing them.

 

[rogerzilla]

Copyright is a good thing, within limits. Personally (and I speak as a Brompton owner) I think they've had their return on the original design and need to innovate a bit more. Use a better grade of steel to save weight (in fact, get the prodigious weight of the thing down to 22lb at the most, so small women and older people can carry it). Make more parts user-serviceable. Lose the threaded headset and fit some bottle bosses. I could go on.

To use an analogy, when Paul McCartney successfully lobbied for music copyright to be extended to 90 years, one pithy comment was, "I wish I could keep being paid for an afternoon's work I did 50 years ago."

 

[Shreds]

The idea of a lightweight Brompton has been achieved (see A to B magazine) and it is a great shame that after having personally had one substantially “lightened” a decade ago (Ti & CF which proves durability and the flex in the current standard Brompton chainset) that Brompton are more interested in profit from clothing and ancillaries than improving Andrew Ritchie’s basic concept, claiming durability is compromised. No it is not.

Better than adding a heavy electric motor at a hell of a price. They are missing a trick undoubtedly.

If they invested much more in R&D in bike design than in bag and clothing design which is short term profit, plus why the Moulton rides better, they could create an even wider market (especially amongst those who are not weightlifters).

As it is I doubt they will change. Shame. (They needed Steve Parry as head of R&D - at least his one off design improvements were innovative).

 

[berlinonaut]

The idea of a lightweight Brompton has been achieved (see A to B magazine) and it is a great shame that after having personally had one substantially “lightened” a decade ago (Ti & CF which proves durability and the flex in the current standard Brompton chainset) that Brompton are more interested in profit from clothing and ancillaries than improving Andrew Ritchie’s basic concept, claiming durability is compromised. No it is not.

Better than adding a heavy electric motor at a hell of a price. They are missing a trick undoubtedly.

If they invested much more in R&D in bike design than in bag and clothing design which is short term profit, plus why the Moulton rides better, they could create an even wider market (especially amongst those who are not weightlifters).

As it is I doubt they will change. Shame. (They needed Steve Parry as head of R&D - at least his one off design improvements were innovative).

While I in general agree with the criticism I think the issue is not that simple. Going electric is THE mainstream of the last years and for the years to come. And it fits perfectly to Brompton's value proposition and vision. To leave out this opportunity would be totally silly and economically a bad decision. Though Brompton has grown massively over the last decade they are still a relatively small company - so focus is probably a good thing. With the move to the new factory with a capacity of 100.000 bikes they are damned to growth. Which they achieve by many different things - one of them is an image change from a quirky engineer's product to a fashion product. More or less what happened to the original Moulton in the 60ies. For that they have created all the bling of the last years with colors, special editions and all the accessories. The market proofs them right so far and those accessories foster the fashion factor of the bike that helps with growth.

Getting lighter and many other bits that forum people demand are very technical driven, so nothing the mainstream would honor too much. Even in this very forum Brompton gets criticized regularly for being too expensive already. Creating lighter bikes, let alone full titanium ones would not help here, in opposite it would raise the price considerably. Instead Brompton invented the B75 as an entry model, much in traditon of the C model of 2000, to reach a lower price tag while sacrificing some more modern components - and it seems to be a huge success.

On the other hand: I cannot imagine that Brompton would not experiment (or have experimented) with lighter materials or a full titanium main frame to some degree. A couple of years ago they ended the contracts with the companies in China and Russia that made the titanium parts for them and founded a daughter company of their own in the UK together with another partner that - as far as I can judge - is now building the titanium parts. Would make perfect sense if this company would do a little R&D on top. Still I do not see a full ti-Brompton just around the corner but given the current crazy prices for Bromptons there seems to be some room for even more expensive models than their current regular ti ones. I guess if they ever invent a ti-frame at some point in future it will quickly be discussed here (and I am sure that a lot of people will complain about the price... ).

Get me right: I dislike a lot of things Brompton currently does - still I think from an economical perspective their decisions make sense for them.

 

[Shreds]

So, economically, Brompton are cashing in on their name. Nearly everything Brompton sell is at a huge premium, which causes many punters to purchase inferior ‘cheap’ lookalikes, that are usually appalling rip offs and actually detract from a good cycling experience, often ending up skipped or on evilBay/Gumtree.

The ‘value’ proposition of the B75 was a good idea, and was probably forced on them because they were losing a significant part of their ‘low end’ market.

However the basic economic fact remains that they need a “product extension strategy” to existing committed Brompton users more than pretty colours.

I sometimes feel Brompton and BrooksEngland (Selle Royale) share the same marketing agency of premium cycling products to a totally committed fan base. (And yes, I do absolutely agree that comfort wise, you do not get better than a leather Brooks).

 

[berlinonaut]

So, economically, Brompton are cashing in on their name.

If you look at ebay at the moment I'd rather say other's are cashing on Brompton's name... Brompton cash on their product and its quality and value that they developed for 40 years. If you look at their financial statements it is not that they would earn silly profits - they are a solid company that is profitable within a very reasonable amount. They deliver decent value - the bikes are in fact not expensive for what you get in exchange, for what you safe in cost for car or public transport and you get astonishing prices when you sell your used Brompton. Not so much to complain I guess.

Nearly everything Brompton sell is at a huge premium, which causes many punters to purchase inferior ‘cheap’ lookalikes, that are usually appalling rip offs and actually detract from a good cycling experience, often ending up skipped or on evilBay/Gumtree.

So it is Brompton's fault that people are buying trashy bikes? Interesting idea.

However the basic economic fact remains that they need a “product extension strategy” to existing committed Brompton users more than pretty colours.

Why?

 

[Shreds]

Business basics