Holding off IP pursuers
- publish258
- Jan 15, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: May 22
DT Swiss redefined how bikers change their wheels, then faced an uphill climb to hold off its IP pursuers after being imitated at a trade show
Hartmut Schütte
DT Swiss has rewritten the history of switching tyres on racing bikes. For 80 years, you had to rely on a version of the clamp, originally devised by the legendary Italian racer, Tullio Campagnolo, as he was making a long solo climb into the Alps with two gears.
DT has speeded up how bikers switch their wheels by creating a lever that acts more like a screw. This quick-release makes it easier and faster to hold everything in place.
Best known for making 200 million spokes a year, DT innovates around wheels, hubs, rims and forks, building up a portfolio of 200 biking patents.
For ten years, it had a clear run with its quick-release wheel. At the Eurobike show, however, it noticed that a competitor was displaying its own version.
Biking is an intensely competitive business and this rival had no interest in negotiating a deal. Over the next 4½ year, DT pursued its case way all the way through the German courts, which confirmed its exclusivity at each stage.
At the same time, its challenger was seeking to nullify DT’s patent, arguing that as a principle it was already in use for milling, walking frames and gym machines. Even if it were already well known, however, the federal court ruled that it was still an invention to apply it to other devices for the first time.
As a precaution, DT switched its claim from product to use, limiting the scope of its patent to quick-release wheels, which was already the case anyway.
So DT’s challenger has had to return to the peloton. Just as significantly, says DT’s attorney, Hartmut Schütte, no one else will be thinking about making a breakaway anytime soon.
• The full case study of DT Swiss and its wheel quick-release by Hartmut Schütte at BSB appears in ‘Winning with IP: Managing intellectual property today’, fourth edition, Novaro Publishing, November 2023. More details here.
