Jones H-Loop shamelessly copied

[Dmitri]

Pretty sure the H-loop is a patented design, so imagine my surprise when I see this:



Yep, China. Nothing's sacred. They even improve on the design, notice the bosses on the far side.

And yeah, some of you might say "there's tons of H-loop copies on Alibaba" — true, but they are all Ti. This is alu, looks identical to Jones.

 

[Nova Haibike]

I do not know if the Jones bar is or is not patented, but I am not outraged, because bike parts in general have been copied since forever.

 

[Trail Cruiser]

It is a blatant patent violation but just like everything else, China has violated all kinds of patent and trademark laws in the book with impunity. The entire country does not observe the international patent and trademark law, in fact, the government seemingly promotes people to do it.

It's sad since China is a major manufacturer of many products, both legitimate and knock offs.

 

[Nova Haibike]

Assuming the Jones bar is patented, it would be helpful to know exactly what the patent covers. Because even though the copy may look similar, it could be different enough to not be in violation of the patent. Like I said, designs have been "copied" all across the board, and not only by the Chinese. Take for example, Shimano Hyperglide. I rather doubt SRAM pays Shimano for their copy of ramped toothed cassette cog technology. Nor does SunTour or SunRace. Why? Because their ramped tooth cassettes are slightly different than Shimano's.

 

[Dmitri]

Here is the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040244526?oq=handlebar+jones

 

[Nova Haibike]

Maybe I don't know what I am looking at, but it says patent application. I tried looking for the actual patent on the U.S. Patent and Trademark office site, but I could not find it (I did not search very hard).

 

[AZOldTech]

FWIW, Canyon, a top of the line German bike manufacturer (that actually manufactures their bikes in Germany), has been shipping their Canyon Grail line of road bikes with something similar for a while now...
https://www.canyon.com/en-us/road/grail

 

[Trail Cruiser]

This is only the tip of the iceberg. These are everywhere, amazon, ebay, alibaba, you name it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-problem-is-getting-worse.html