QBP Tour (Quality Bicycle Products)

[Midwest-MTBer]

So I had the opportunity to tour QBP's Minnesota headquarters the other week to see the inner workings of their company and specifically their design team. It was fascinating to see massive warehouse rooms filled with bike stuff... Eagle drivetrains everywhere and test bikes all over. It was an awesome tour, but why would I post about it? Well we had a meeting with one of the Industrial Designers who told us that QBP doesn't patent their frame designs. I was shocked! If QBP frames aren't patented why aren't the Chinese making "inspired" frame designs around more current geometry and bike technologies? QBP owns Surly, Salsa, Heller, Foundry Cycles, etc. I just wonder why they aren't making more current designs. Granted cutting molds at each size is probably $10,000+ per mold...

Anyways. Just thought it was interesting.

[Carbon_Dude]

Possibly they don't patent because, one, their Split Pivot suspension, used on the Salsa bikes, is licensed from Dave Weagle so it's not their own original design to patent.  It appears that all of Salsa's FS bikes use the same split pivot suspension design.  Surly, Heller, and Foundry don't have any FS bikes, Salsa is the only brand of QBP that has FS.  Two, you really can't patent frame geometry, at least not that I've seen.  Anyone can put together a frame of various dimensions and angles, there is nothing unique about that.

As a Mechanical Engineer myself and some experience with patents within my company, it makes me wonder, how much actual "engineering" they do at QBP compared to other mainstream big brands like Specialized, Trek and Giant.