Patent Battle May Loom Over 'Copenhagen Wheel' Electric Bike 152
curtwoodward writes "Nearly four years after the concept was introduced, MIT spinout Superpedestrian has started selling its $700 'Copenhagen wheel' kits that promise to turn any old bike into an electric-powered, smartphone-connected dynamo, simply by swapping out the back wheel. But they're not alone: a competing startup called FlyKly has already raised $700,000 worth of pre-orders for a similar device. Superpedestrian, which holds exclusive license to the MIT patents covering the Copenhagen wheel, clearly thinks there's some foul play going on. 'Their founder actually dropped by our lab at MIT a year and a half ago, saying he wants to collaborate, and spent quite some time with the Copenhagen wheel team. We'll leave it at that,' Superpedestrian founder Assaf Biderman said."
Re:Does FlyKly work... (Score:2, Informative)
Spoken like a true hipster.
Re:As Seen On TV (Score:2, Informative)
On the show they did call it the "Copenhagen Wheel" and Andy brought it back from Denmark, so yes it the same device.
Re:This is the Published Application, not patent (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.google.com/patents/US20110133542 [google.com]
While interesting, and some things might seem novel to the casual uninterested reader, I can see nothing truly novel - as in would not be thought of in a few days by an engineer skilled in the field facing the same problems.
Aspects of this patent I've got prototype code somewhere (if I haven't thrown out the disk) around optimising fuel use of a hybrid car.