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re: statuses, the big (i mean huge) specialized dealer here didn't get a single one. was told they went to places like bellingham and santa cruz area. it's a perfect shred sled for all the dirt jumpy/bike parks here. i can only imagine there are none left.
Is it a single pivot? Looks like the rear pivot is on the chainstay/swingarm, but I can't really tell
Supposedly Trek did the ABP on their own at the same time. Plus they used a full floater shock as well, which was their official differentiation to the whole thing.
As for stealing, Commencal also did it with the first gen clash, so...
https://www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2012/09/07/weagle-sues-tr…
DW did not win, though:
https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/news/Judge-Rules-Treks-ABP-Design-Does-No…
As for the DW link, if I understood the patent correctly, the gist of it is that going through the travel, the IC moves towards the lower link and is positioned between the two pivots of the lower link at the end of the travel. That's how I understood the patent. If that is true, looking at some of the 'DW link' bikes, that can not be true as the upper link rotates way more than that and the IC actually should come out the back of the lower link and into the rear wheel.
Supposedly if you do not enforce a patent, it can 'fail' (competitors have grounds to claim that you did not enforce it in other cases, if you do enforce in their case), but I don't know what it means if you're marketing something as X when it's not actually the same as the patent. A grammatical/legality detail, where you market it as X, but the original thing that was patented was Y, where originally X=Y, but X is not Y anymore?
With this proto the pivot location moved up even further, making an idler necessary to prevent pedal kickback and not have the antisquat too high.
As for horst link (brake-wise) and high pivot, nobody ever said a high pivot needs to be a single pivot, it's just that the majority of bikes with a high pivot are single pivots (Norco's incoming bikes are not, for example). I'm guessing it's much easier to tune a high pivot and the idler position with a single pivot (less variables), but I think you do get benefits with a 4-bar high pivot bike - less brake squat. With the high pivot nomenclature here indicating a rearward axle path. The pivots can actually be in locations close to what we currently use for 'normal' bikes, it's just the kinematics that are different.
Also about the patents, it should be noted that the US and EU laws are pretty different, in EU you can only patent something that is "new and inovative", so when Specialized tried to patent FSR in EU as in US they've been told something like its just another suspension design and were rejected... so thats why likes of YT and canyon were unable to sell their bikes to US in early days, but can do so now because the patent expired a couple of years ago...
There are also lots of patents in Europe, which are enforced. Kavenz did have to change their idler position due to a patent.