Patent Granted in March 2020

I got it! At last!

I do not mean "heureka" or "Ευρηκα", although I have really found a solution, but that was a few years ago. Now, in early 2020 finally, my patent in the field of vehicle technology has been officially granted by the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA), as may be read at the DPMA registry data base. A patent for a new design combination of secondary drive, wheel suspension and drive wheel of a vehicle, preferably a two-wheeler.

Drive and transmission technology is a realm that does not stagnate, but to which only medium development potential is ascribed. Engineers are anticipating a gradual evolution rather than expecting revolutionary innovations. Traction-X wants to attract attention all the more, because this invention has the potential to trigger a revolution in the field of drive technology. Traction-X is purely mechanics and therefore the proof that here is still innovative potential, even during the third millennium.

There would hardly be enough space here for a complete description of the eventful saga, which I went through from the first sketch for Traction-X to the patent certificate. The triggering moment of the technical idea was a vacation trip, in which I directly compared the driving characteristics of a small scooter with those of a small motorcycle.

On the one hand, there was an extremely comfortable seating position, including footwell, with the comfort of a centrifugal clutch and automatic transmission in conjunction with a hard-hitting suspension on small wheels that literally plunged into every pothole, as well as an uneven driving behaviour that required permanent corrections. That was the scooter.

On the other hand, there were large wheels with good rolling comfort, excellent suspension comfort and stable road holding in combination with a laboriously operated six-speed gearbox and a narrow seat, as well as all kinds of technology between the legs. That was the motorcycle.

How, I wondered, could you combine the good properties of one two-wheeler with the positive properties of the other two-wheeler?

These technical considerations, which preoccupied me as an engineer for a while, resulted in some pencil sketches, which I reworked into a qualitative technical design via 2D-CAD. I then did a survey of the technical state of the art and a search for existing, similar patent applications or granted patents. I did not find any, although I did a thorough job of combing the relevant databases. So I worked out a text description with drawings and the individual claims and registered the invention with the German Patent and Trademark Office.

The experience with a previous application, which I had written with the help of a patent attorney, made things easier. This time I was the sole author of the patent application and after I formally met all requirements, the application was published. First of all, I requested an investigation of similar concepts by the DPMA, which yielded a non-binding examination result in advance. After some costly advice from a law firm for patent law, I was able to technically correctly classify the similar applications that were held up by the patent office. We were able to clearly assign the inventive step of my application to several crucial features. The DPMA shared this assessment. So I submitted the request for examination. After a formal improvement, in particular an expansion of the technical state of the art, the patent was finally granted, almost three years after the examination was initiated.

That was in late March 2020.