Did the GB Cycling Team Steal a Dutch Bike Design?

A patent news fact check in four questions

As an avid practitioner of active and passive sports with a background in science and engineering, news stories about technical innovations in sports attract my attention. When those stories involve patents too, I have to write about it. Yesterday, the public Dutch broadcasting organisation (NOS) brought a story (Dutch only) about British track cyclists that would have 'stolen' a Dutch invention to increase their already quite substantial chances of winning gold medals in the Tokyo Olympics.

As is not uncommon in news items in the entertainment category, the NOS only spoke with a marketing manager of one of the parties involved and did not really bother to investigate the legal background of the case. Such an approach is unlikely to lead to a fair and balanced article, so I decided to do some work for them and answer the four questions below.

Was the bike design Dutch?

The company spokesperson interviewed by the NOS is one of the founders of the Dutch triathlon bike brand Kú?Cycle. With a clear focus on innovation and technology, this new brand has quickly become a key player in the Dutch triathlon equipment market. An important aspect of their commercially successful bikes is the special design of an integrated fork and steer assembly. Something similar appears to be used on the Lotus/Hope track bike now used by GB Cycling.

The design, however, does not appear to be Dutch. In 2016, a patent application for a new bike design was filed. In March of this year, a European patent for the invention was granted. This patent mentions the Italian Richard McAinsh as the inventor. So, while it may be true that the invention is now commercialised by a Dutch company, the original design is Italian.

Did GB Cycling try to patent a Kú?Cycle invention?

According to the NOS article, GB cycling would have applied for a patent for the same invention, but that patent application would have been refused because it came too close to the McAinsh invention. And indeed, The British Cycling Federation (GB Cycling) did file a UK patent application in 2019, which patent application has since been abandoned.

However, this patent application appears to be aimed at different aspects of the design of the bike (an increased width of the fork in order to align the fork with the cyclist's legs). The UK patent office did consider the McAinsh patent to be relevant technical background information for the later GB Cycling patent application, but this was unlikely to be the reason for the abandonment of the latter.

In 2020, GB Cycling filed an international PCT patent application, claiming priority of the original UK patent application. This patent application is still pending. GB Cycling does still have the possibility to obtain a patent for their own innovative bike design in most countries of the world, including the UK.

Can a patent be used to stop Olympic athletes using your technology?

According to the article, Kú?Cycle is planning to 'take legal steps' but had no intention to block the use of the Lotus/Hope bikes during the Olympics. This would also have been difficult without a valid patent in Japan. The McAinsh invention is patented in the US and a number of European countries only.

If Kú?Cycle had wanted to do anything about this, they should have acted while the bikes were still on British soil. Also then, this may not have been very easy or useful. A patent can generally be used to stop others from commercially exploiting your patented inventions. Making, owning, or using a patented product as such is not an infringing activity. The activity only becomes infringing when it is used in a commercial context. Assuming the McAinsh patent is valid and infringed, it can be used to stop the sale of triathlon and track cycles using this invention in, e.g., British shops. It may, however, be a lot more difficult to argue that the use of a bike at the Olympics is a commercial activity.

Most British cyclists may be professional athletes, but they travelled to Japan to compete in a sports competition, not to sell bikes. Even if you can prove that the Olympics are not an amateur sports event, and that the performing athletes are in Tokyo to do business, there is only a limited number of athletes to sue. The costs for going through the legal procedures to enforce the patent could easily outweigh the possible financial compensation that may be awarded if the infringement is confirmed.

Did the GB Cycling Team steal a Dutch bike design?

Back to the original question in the NOS headline. Did the GB cycling team steal an invention? When inventors see their inventions being used by others, they often have a feeling that their invention was stolen from them. While it does sometimes happen that designs and technical information are stolen from others for commercial use, I don't think that the image of thievery is an appropriate one when discussing possible patent infringement.

Patent infringement can be intentional. Someone sees a good idea and copies it, either without bothering to check if it is protected by patents (bad), or while knowing that it has been patented (worse). Often, patent infringement is unintentional. All inventions are inspired by earlier technical developments. In the NOS article, it is explained how McAinsh himself took the inspiration for his bicycle inventions from Formula 1 racing. Engineers with similar educational and professional backgrounds often work on solutions to the same problems, It is not surprising that, now and then, similar inventions are made in more than one location.

The Lotus/Hope bike was first presented (and production-ready) in 2019, right about the time when the company Kú?Cycle was founded and the European McAinsh patent application was published. The original Italian patent application had been published in 2018, but it is not unlikely that this remained unnoticed to the Lotus/Hope engineers and/or that their own design ideas were already developing in a similar direction earlier.

With no further information about the details of this story, I consider it likely that both bikes were developed in parallel and no ideas have really been stolen. It is possible, or even likely, that McAinsh was the first one who came up with the ideas now protected by his European and US patents. It seems clear that he was the first one to patent those ideas. If Lotus/Hope want to sell their track bikes to the public after the Olympics, they may have to contact the patent owner (Aperta B.V.) to discuss a reasonable license fee for using this invention first.