SRBSpeed

@taletotell you are absolutely correct, however, I was commenting on the morality of large, financially stable company ripping off a small inventor in a very particular case. Financially it is a different story, and it worked (although I don't know how well seeing as not many people, myself included, are fans of FELT bikes). I feel that you are talking about patent trolls such as those within large tech giants, which is unfortunately too common. And yes that is 100% about people making money. I agree that patents can infringe upon creativity just the same as they worked to foster and encourage it (especially in the tech world); the system is not perfect and I am not here to try and solve the problems of inventors and companies. Currently the life of a patent is 20 years meaning that companies will be paying Mr.DW lots of money well into my late 30's, so yes some designs are going to never come to fruition because of inventors and companies not wanting to license from Weagle so yes a patents life should be shortened by a count of years and that would maybe return some of the equilibrium you are hoping for.Also take into consideration, say if FELT had licensed the design from Kavik, could he have had the financial backing to develop a new or improved linkage that now may never come to be? I would wager this subject could be written about extensively, so for the sake of brevity and to keep in consideration that we are here for bikes not for legal discussions, I'll say that large companies such as FELT ripping of small inventors is immoral but financially sound and that the patent system is flawed but seems to function well enough to usually not cause turmoil when used properly (i.e excluding patent trolls).

Patents were instantiated around the idea of encouraging bright people to push the engineering envelope while fearing not for others profiting from their inventions and ideas. While, in my opinion, it was beyond stupid to display a un-patented suspension design freely at a large event such as inter bike without the protection of a patent, people should have enough respect for the inventor and ideals on which the idea of a patent are based upon to not pirate. If it was a poor business owner who was on the brink of the starvation of his family and stole the idea to get his business going, that would be one thing (even then the ethics are highly questionable). When a large value company, like FELT, goes and exploits this window they are once again showing that greed triumphs over respect and that the name of Capitalism shall be further slandered…Shame really…

♫ "You spin my head right round right round when you go down, when you go down down" ♫