My extremely naive, and perhaps wholly incorrect, assumption, is that the ring/guard interface is critical to the patentability here (i.e. it's not just _that_ the guard bolts to the ring; it's that the ring supports the guard, as Andrew pointed out, with the triangular cutout interfaces). Around paragraph 0057 (typeset pg3 of the patent application) there's a description of how the backplates "nest" with the guard itself through the chainring. That's not only a pretty slick design, it's also a point in favor of the "novelty" of the invention (one of the patentability factors) if prior chainring-mounted bashes have just used bolt-on interfaces.
One of my intellectual property professors in law school once pointed out that when the Patent and Trademark Office looks at patents for fairly niche mechanical designs, such as (ahem) "off-road cycles," the PTO tends to look at how "novel" or "non-obvious" the invention is through the eyes of someone who knows, say, carbon-fiber layup or metalworking, but not necessarily someone who knows _bicycles_. So something that might seem obvious to a cyclist (that it would make sense to mount a bash guard to the chainring itself) might be a pretty novel, not-so-obvious idea for someone who just looks at chainrings as billeted/stamped/forged/etc. alloy or steel. As a result, you could argue that pretty much all new designs in the MTB space have a lower bar to patenting, as long as the patent holder has enough money invested in IP development and legal representation (as SRAM certainly does).
The other thing that jumped out to me reading the application is the "torque input/torque output" distinction that they're making, with the leading edge(s) of the twin guard(s) sitting a smidge closer to the teeth than the trailing edge(s). Not sure if there have been other tapered/sloped guard setups (the MRP guards are somewhat offset, but maybe not patented as such?).
July 13, 2023, 10:48 a.m. - gubbinalia
My extremely naive, and perhaps wholly incorrect, assumption, is that the ring/guard interface is critical to the patentability here (i.e. it's not just _that_ the guard bolts to the ring; it's that the ring supports the guard, as Andrew pointed out, with the triangular cutout interfaces). Around paragraph 0057 (typeset pg3 of the patent application) there's a description of how the backplates "nest" with the guard itself through the chainring. That's not only a pretty slick design, it's also a point in favor of the "novelty" of the invention (one of the patentability factors) if prior chainring-mounted bashes have just used bolt-on interfaces. One of my intellectual property professors in law school once pointed out that when the Patent and Trademark Office looks at patents for fairly niche mechanical designs, such as (ahem) "off-road cycles," the PTO tends to look at how "novel" or "non-obvious" the invention is through the eyes of someone who knows, say, carbon-fiber layup or metalworking, but not necessarily someone who knows _bicycles_. So something that might seem obvious to a cyclist (that it would make sense to mount a bash guard to the chainring itself) might be a pretty novel, not-so-obvious idea for someone who just looks at chainrings as billeted/stamped/forged/etc. alloy or steel. As a result, you could argue that pretty much all new designs in the MTB space have a lower bar to patenting, as long as the patent holder has enough money invested in IP development and legal representation (as SRAM certainly does). The other thing that jumped out to me reading the application is the "torque input/torque output" distinction that they're making, with the leading edge(s) of the twin guard(s) sitting a smidge closer to the teeth than the trailing edge(s). Not sure if there have been other tapered/sloped guard setups (the MRP guards are somewhat offset, but maybe not patented as such?).