They just look similar but this is another suspension design. It's called Floating Shock Suspension. The diferense between 7Point and this frame is the suspension pivot on the front end of the bike on the lower mount of the shock

the difference is pathetically minimal and makes no difference, its just to avoid copyright infringement and keep up with trends.

This bike is as bad as those cheap 'Kevin Klein' copies you can but in Majorcan outdoor markets!

a cmon' copy or not its form is nicer, less bulky, bit more decent lines.

yeh ill agree it does look much nice than the 2010 giants
looks less like a square lol

This is not a copy of another frame. This is patented frame by Taiwanese manufacturer ATSRO. Manufacturing code for this frame is AFFRB. See this page or just the picture

noone really care that much, i was refering to the looks

I'm just pointing that. This is a 2009 frame and the Giants are 2010. Who looks similar to who

Arioth -> You are right but I am affraid that you got yourself a bit misinformed... Astro is nothing more than a company that uses some of the bigger factories in the Taiwan that do bikes for many companies. If you look through their models you will find consipiracy bikes, poison bikes, probably a cheap version of SC bullit. This is a classic example of chinese treatment of patents and other's peoples work on developing projects (I guess that's one of possibilites to payback for exploiting their labor). U manufacture a bike for X company, in order to do that U need to obtain a full technical project specification from the bike designer. Then when U kind'a like the product, U open a second production line just behind the wall, change a few things (like material) to lower the price and U do sort of "your own stuff". This is how they work.

the suspension is quite different though because it uses a floating rear shock.

the giant 2009 look like this too, it even looks like the trance x series

why would they get sued? this suspension is different then all the ones you listed?

yea, it is a bit different. A very tiny bit, exactly as each one listed by me is a tiny bit different from each other, however Weagle and Giant make so much noise about their patents and their uniqueness, and that the milimeter in a pivot location makes a huge difference (not mentioning the unique axle path argument which is the ultimate stupidity) - that's why Im having a laugh from them

DW has said himself that Maestro is a copy of his design but he can't do anything about it. Giant is a massive international company with locations across the world. If I remember correctly there are less than 5 people [if that] that work directly with DW. A small tiny company vs a cooperate giant [no pun intended], who is going to win a court case? DW can't afford suing them.

welle there is a crappy polish company called Duncon, and they don't get sued, there's also a good polish company called Karpiel bikes. Both small enough to get sued by Weagle. All I am saying is that this patent is weak - it just hasn't been claimed early enough like Santa Cruz did with their VPP.

From my understanding, Duncon is pretty f*cking big and owns a couple brands. Karpiel is not Polish. They were American and Duncon bought them. They still are American. Just a Polish company owns them...

Well Karpiel bikes is own by Jan Karpiel who is 100% polish, he lived in USA for pretty big part of his life. Few years ago he moved back to Poland and started doing frames again, so Karpiel bikes became pretty much polish with very good network of contacts in US. Duncon is not big, you cannot be big by doing a couple of low-budget gravity specific frames in Taiwan. Unbelievable thing to me is that they charge so much money for their frames in US and elsewhere than Poland. They claim to be big, they are just bloody pathetic. First idiots kinda used VPP, i believe without letting Santa Cruz know, because they used it for perhaps 2 years and created "their own design". Why I am so picky about them? because they fart around how big and great they are (at least in PL) while producing average stuff at high prices. At the same time Poland "has given the world" the Nortshore bikes and Zumbi which kind'a do their own business well without bull*itting people.