Beacon Helmet, a Kickstarter project that road.cc recently reported on, is being accused of copyright infringement by Blaze because they claim the laser image of a bike that projects out of the front of the helmet is Blaze’s own patented innovation, appearing on their Laserlight front bike light.
Review: Blaze Laserlight front light
Blaze Laserlight to be rolled out across Santander Cycles scheme
The £249 helmet has indicators, built-in speakers and also beams lasers either side of the rider, but the use of the laser-projected image of a bike out front is where Blaze claim the product utilises their own copyrighted technology. Blaze founder and creator Emily Brooke said of the Beacon Helmet product and its Kickstarter campaign: “It’s very frustrating to see a company use our innovation and imagery when we’ve invested so much time and energy in to making cycling safer, it’s unsatisfactory.
“We just hope they take it down on this occasion, or we will be taking legal action because it goes against what we do as a company.”
In response, Jeff Zhang of Beacon Helmet told road.cc: “The third party company is referring specifically to the laser-projected bike image. They wouldn’t be able to claim to have a patent for laser projection from a helmet because I hold that patent. This company only allege that the shape of our green bicycle projection looks like their trademarked image.
“I guess some companies just don’t like new companies like ours competing with them.”
Beacon Helmet have changed the bike image in their promotional video (above) that appeared in our original article, saying: “This does not mean we agree with the third-party’s view that using the green bicycle image is a violation of their trademark. We are doing this so to make sure our campaign would not be forcefully stopped for the moment.”
Blaze also began life as a Kickstarter project itself, successfully raising more than double its original £25,000 target to bring their Laserlight into production, and also the Burner rear light in a separate campaign. The company scooped a contract with Santander Cycles in late 2015 to have 11,500 Santander hire bikes fitted with Blaze Laserlights. An advert featuring Jenson Button, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Rory McIlroy was made to celebrate the partnership.
A source also claimed that a Beacon Helmet employee purchased a Laserlight last year; however Zhang claims that isn’t possible, as the company was only incorporated in February 2017.
35 thoughts on “Laser battle: Blaze claim New Beacon Helmet infringes copyrighted design of their Laserlight innovation”
Can’t help laughing at that
Can’t help laughing at that video as everyone riding a bike in it looks as competent as a 4 year old. What’s with doing 5mph and wobbling all over the road?
Are they claiming patent
Are they claiming patent infringement or copyright infringement – they’re quite different things.
Patent infringement on my understanding would be unlikely to cover the precise colour and shape of the stylised bike image being projected. Patent would be more about the how the idea of projecting such an image had been implemented i.e. the invention.
Copyright would be about the design itself. NB, copyright would be different again to trademark violation.
I’d couldn’t quickly find clear examples of the stylised bike image that each of these projects, but they don’t look entirely identical to me. The curved frames looks vaguely similar, but there’s obviously only so many ways you can draw a stylised bike…
Patents are supposed to cover non-obvious innovations, but seems you can get patents for pretty much anything these days. So I’d guess that’s what they’re claiming. But personally I think bringing such a claim will make any claim to be promoting cyclist safety sound a bit hollow – if it’s such a great innovation for safety, why prevent others from running with the idea in other ways?
Edit: non of the above obviously deals with the question of whether having all this on a helmet, with the laser image moving widly around whenever you move your head, is actually a good idea in the first place…
gw42 wrote:
Unless it’s a military/supervillain grade laser (sharks optional) that can take out close-passing, left-hooking drivers (or at least disable their metal killing machines), then the answer is no.
[Deborah Meaden voice] Sorry, but I’m out [/DM voice]
CygnusX1 wrote:
I wouldn’t want to be the one who had to fit these helmets to the sharks…
Neither of them will be a
Neither of them will be a patch on the lighting up of the faces of the litigation lawyers.
“A source also claimed that a
“A source also claimed that a Beacon Helmet employee purchased a Laserlight last year; however Zhang claims that isn’t possible, as the company was only incorporated in February 2017. ” – surely that isn’t the point. Did a person now working for Beacon Helmet purchase a Laserlight last year, prior to commencing work for Beacon Helmet??
gw42 beat me to it – this
gw42 beat me to it – this article is a whole mess of a confusion between copyright, trademarks and patents.
Patents – when you make public a non-obvious method in return for state granted, time limited, exclusive rights.
Copyrights – an exclusive right to use and distribute an original work. Covers only the original expression of that and NOT the underlying ideas
Trademarks – a recognisable sign/slogan that identifies products/services or companies.
So, if Beacon copied the identical bike logo, then they’re infringing copyright (they just need to change the image slightly) if the bike logo is considered original (I don’t).
If Beacon are using Blaze’s name or brand logo, then that would be trademark infringement (unlikely to be the case here).
If Beacon are using the same method as described in Blaze’s patent, then they would be guilty of infringing the patent even if they independently came up with the same idea.
hawkinspeter wrote:
Patent – when you think of something trivial and obvious but get to the patent office first. A means for suppressing competition for those who have more money for lawyers than do potential rivals. A way for companies that do nothing but buy up and hoard patents or try to sneak them into widely used standards to seek rent so as to avoid having to actually do anything productive.
Copyrights – the right to rent-seek for a completely absurd length of time and get paid multiple times for the same piece of work, even after you’ve died.
Trademark – well, this one’s probably fair enough, really.
I just did a quick search for
I just did a quick search for the patent and the one I found was filed by Emily Brooke in 2011. However, the specific claims mention affixing to a two-wheeled vehicle, so I don’t think it would cover a helmet device. (GB2490889B)
I love it when people try and
I love it when people try and patent things like the word ‘and’…
alansmurphy wrote:
!Patent
Neither of these peices of
Neither of these peices of crap will do anything for cycle safety, they are a distraction from the root causes of danger and will give their users a false sense of security.
Can’t help thinking someone took a back hander to put them on boris bikes.
Does anyone really get a
Does anyone really get a false sense of security.
Just last night I winterised my bike with knobbly tyres, 3 front lights and 3 rears. I didn’t suddenly start leaning into the corners nor did i change my view that everyone in a metal box is potentially trying to kill me – I just know that they won’t have a valid excuse when they do…
alansmurphy wrote:
The statistical evidence (rather than individual self-reported feelings) seems to strongly suggest that it does happen in many cases.
An example being the increase in non-car-occupant KSI figures immediately after seatbelts became mandatory.
Whether it happens with bike helmets or knobbly tyres, I don’t know. But your beliefs about your own behaviour don’t really tell us anything about the facts. I would tend to assume that we all do all sorts of things we aren’t aware of doing and have motivations we aren’t aware of having.
[Like, I don’t know why I’m even posting this!}
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
Does anyone really get a false sense of security.
Just last night I winterised my bike with knobbly tyres, 3 front lights and 3 rears. I didn’t suddenly start leaning into the corners nor did i change my view that everyone in a metal box is potentially trying to kill me – I just know that they won’t have a valid excuse when they do…
— FluffyKittenofTindalos The statistical evidence (rather than individual self-reported feelings) seems to strongly suggest that it does happen in many cases. An example being the increase in non-car-occupant KSI figures immediately after seatbelts became mandatory. Whether it happens with bike helmets or knobbly tyres, I don’t know. But your beliefs about your own behaviour don’t really tell us anything about the facts. I would tend to assume that we all do all sorts of things we aren’t aware of doing and have motivations we aren’t aware of having. [Like, I don’t know why I’m even posting this!}— alansmurphy
I would suggest that, yes people do get a false sense of security:
I bought my son the Aldi black cycle jacket in last month’s “special”. He mythered on and on about not being seen by other road users until I made him an armband out of an old hi viz jacket, with some reflective trim. It’s only about four inches wide, but he is satisfied that he is more visible and rides more confidently.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
Link to your evidence please.
I can’t see any significant increase in cyclist or pedestrian KSI figures after seatbelt laws were introduced in the UK.
1983 – Compulsory for drivers
1991 – Compulsory for passengers
Rich_cb wrote:
Link to your evidence please.
I can’t see any significant increase in cyclist or pedestrian KSI figures after seatbelt laws were introduced in the UK.
1983 – Compulsory for drivers
1991 – Compulsory for passengers— FluffyKittenofTindalos
Not sure what the relevance of that graph is. It only starts 3 years before the seat belt law was introduced, so how could you pick up any trend?
It is, all the same, potentially consistent with the point – that there was a general long-term downward trend in such casualties, and when seatbelts were introduced that trend was slowed/interrupted. Your own graph doesn’t contradict that, revealing that those death rates remained constant for about a decade after seatbelt laws were introduced.
Of course, to see any more than that would require data going back well before 1980.
These pages have such data.
Note that the ratio of ped/cylist deaths to car occupant deaths went up suddenly and discontinuously when the seat belt law came in, and stayed above where the previous trend line would have taken it. And at least in the first year that was as much due to an increase in ped/cyclist deaths as a decrease in driver deaths (so, and this is a bit of an assumption, granted, it would seem likely that continued to explain why it stayed above the previous trend line).
http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2009/11/05/seat-belts-another-look-at-the-data/
http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2009/09/30/second-open-letter-to-executive-director-of-pacts/
I don’t agree with that guy’s strong anti-seat-belt line (I would only advocate the “metal spike in the middle of the steering wheel” idea as a joke), but the data does seem to clearly support the existence of risk-compensation behaviour.
Which to me, in any case, seems quite obvious from observed behaviour of people anyway – just look at how people drive faster when roads are designed to make speed safer for them.
[edit] Happens even if it is next to a school, say, and potentially endangers others…yet if there’s a speed camera so there’s a risk to their bank balance, they’ll slow down. Remove the risk to the bank balance and speed and hence danger to pedestrians goes up again. Why would the risks associated with presence or absence of seatbelts have a different effect to the risks associated with the presence or absence of speed cameras?
(edit again) I agree it’s not a large effect. The total extra deaths of cyclists/pedestrians since seat belt laws came in (the difference between where the trend line would have extrapolated to vs where it ended up after the jump with the introduction of the law) is probably quite small and also is reliant on subtle and challengeable statistics.
But I’m not saying ban seatbelts, all I’m saying is that risk compensation is a real thing, whether you are consciously aware of engaging in it personally or not.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
That’s your evidence? It’s statistically worthless.
Where to start?
It uses absolute casualty data which doesn’t take in to account changes in population or behaviour.
The ratio is completely meaningless in isolation. It can change due to a decrease in driver deaths or an increase in cycling/pedestrian deaths or a bit of both.
We know there was no significant change in the rate of pedestrian or cyclist deaths in the immediate years post 1983 so the ratio change can be attributed entirely to a decline in driver fatalities and statistical noise.
The underlying theory is even flawed. If risk compensation were to blame then it stands to reason that the motorists would have to believe that the seatbelt made them safer.
Front seatbelts were mandatory on all new cars in the UK from 1968.
The vast majority of cars in the UK would have had front seatbelts long before the 1983 law.
Those motorists who believed most strongly in the use of seatbelts would therefore already have been wearing them before 1983.
So any risk compensation would have taken place long before and would presumably have been linked to a slow steady increase in pedestrian/cyclist fatalities if the theory were correct.
That didn’t happen.
You original argument was that deaths spiked after mandatory seatbelt laws.
There is absolutely no evidence to support this.
The links you posted do not support this.
Risk compensation might be a thing but I’ve yet to see any good large scale studies that show it having a meaningful effect at a population level.
Rich_cb wrote:
Liking the to and fro! I feel you also need to compare the K(SI) data with the composition of the cycling cohort. Risk compensation among those cycling in hostile conditions means reducing numbers cycling. Over much of the country (i.e. apart from London and a very few other areas -DfT stats), there has been an overall decline in cycling numbers (as opposed to average cycling distances -your average cyclist is riding further – Cycling UK stats). So while this may not be obviously reflected in KSI per distance figures, I suggest that a large part of the remainder who do choose to cycle are those who know how to cycle in hostile conditions. Adding in that Bikeabilty has become more widely taught, it’s not really surprising that fatalities are reducing (while acknowledging that improvements in medical interventions are also helping). So at bottom, it needs to be established that the data reflect more than simple Darwinism.
Rich_cb wrote:
Say you had something that in an instant really messed with an entire country’s traffic, turned the roads upside-down, critics decrying it as certain carnage…
And yet… On the day, there were fewer collisions – and that effect went on for 6 weeks, until, gradually, as people got used to the new, upside-down world, they got complacent, and in 18 months casualty rates were back to normal.
You would have observed the effect both ways, wouldn’t you? You would have seen the reduced casualties from people behaving more cautiously, and the fairly rapid regression as people compensated. At population level.
Sweden, 1967.
davel wrote:
Iceland, 1968
davel wrote:
Assuming people didn’t just avoid the roads during the transition period?
Assuming that there wasn’t a greater police presence on the roads during the transition period?
Both certainly occurred.
Edit: In fairness that is still the best example I have seen to support the hypothesis.
Rich_cb wrote:
That’s your evidence? It’s statistically worthless.
Where to start?
It uses absolute casualty data which doesn’t take in to account changes in population or behaviour.
The ratio is completely meaningless in isolation. It can change due to a decrease in driver deaths or an increase in cycling/pedestrian deaths or a bit of both.
We know there was no significant change in the rate of pedestrian or cyclist deaths in the immediate years post 1983 so the ratio change can be attributed entirely to a decline in driver fatalities and statistical noise.
The underlying theory is even flawed. If risk compensation were to blame then it stands to reason that the motorists would have to believe that the seatbelt made them safer.
Front seatbelts were mandatory on all new cars in the UK from 1968.
The vast majority of cars in the UK would have had front seatbelts long before the 1983 law.
Those motorists who believed most strongly in the use of seatbelts would therefore already have been wearing them before 1983.
So any risk compensation would have taken place long before and would presumably have been linked to a slow steady increase in pedestrian/cyclist fatalities if the theory were correct.
That didn’t happen.
You original argument was that deaths spiked after mandatory seatbelt laws.
There is absolutely no evidence to support this.
The links you posted do not support this.
Risk compensation might be a thing but I’ve yet to see any good large scale studies that show it having a meaningful effect at a population level.— FluffyKittenofTindalos
Where to start, indeed.
You are suggesting, then, that there was a very sudden discontinuous increase in the population the very year that seatbelt laws came in?
Be serious. I remember that year and there was no sudden arrival of large numbers of drivers. So that eliminates that point.
And a change in ‘behaviour’ is exactly the point.
You say there was no _increase_ in deaths of non-occupants in the years following the introduction, but ignore the point that the previous _decrease_ stopped.
So, your counter argument doesn’t really work.
Really though you are just attempting to argue that up is down and black is white, so you are onto a non-starter. Risk compensation behaviour can be seen all the time (I note you ignored the point about speed-cameras). I don’t quite get why you are so determined to deny it exists.
Regarding your other point about the law affecting the drivers who didn’t already choose seatbelts, you haven’t shown that drivers who refused to wear seat belts voluntarily didn’t feel safer when wearing them due to being obliged to by law. You skipped that step of the argument.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
You’ve misunderstood my point and, probably, the entire topic.
I didn’t suggest there was a huge increase in the population, I said that changes in population are a reason not to use absolute figures.
The ratio is meaningless as it can change without any increased risk to cyclist/pedestrians.
The graph I provided proved that there was no significant increase in risk to pedestrians/cyclists. The change in the ratio was therefore down to a decrease in driver deaths in isolation.
As an aside that ratio is a worthless measure, if almost everybody stopped driving and took up cycling/walking instead the ratio would increase massively even though the roads would be much safer.
So your data is not a useful way of measuring road safety.
If you can provide actual data showing a previous decline in cyclist/pedestrian KSIs abruptly stopping post 1983 please provide it.
You seem to now have completely changed your original argument as it’s been shown to be incorrect.
Unless you can provide some useful data your new argument won’t fare any better.
Rich_cb wrote:
You’ve misunderstood my point and, probably, the entire topic.
I didn’t suggest there was a huge increase in the population, I said that changes in population are a reason not to use absolute figures.— FluffyKittenofTindalos
Are you saying there was a sudden change in population that year or not? If not, then then your objection doesn’t work. If so, then prove it.
So you are claiming that suddenly in that year there was a discontinuous change in the numbers cycling, walking or driving? If not, your point again is irrelevant.
So far none of your alternative explanations stand up.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
You are deliberately avoiding my main criticism of your ratio and misrepresenting my argument.
The ratio can get worse without cycling/walking getting any more dangerous. Post 1983 being a perfect example of this. It can get worse even if cycling becomes safer. It is therefore worthless as a measure of road safety.
The criticism about using absolute numbers is a separate one and applies more to long term trends, as presented in one of your links.
Finally, can’t draw any meaningful conclusions from 2 years of data when the numbers studied are relatively small as you won’t be able to prove statistical significance.
You made the initial assertion that there was marked change in pedestrian/cyclist injuries post 1983.
You have provided no evidence for this.
Provide the evidence or withdraw the argument.
alansmurphy wrote:
The thing is, these aren’t aimed at experienced cyclists, they are aimed at people who just wanna hop off and on a bike without giving much thought to it or research as yer geeky cyclists (us) might. The more safe and confident people feel, the more risks they will take. If these don’t provide any real benefits (I don’t believe they do) then that’s a problem
Also just notice, Blaze are
Also just notice, Blaze are in trouble here. Their bike is going the other way!
What?
What?
Hmmm, so the evidence
Hmmm, so the evidence suggests that everyone started going quicker when they had seatbelts? Causation or correlation, reporting of statistics or truth, and when the law changed was it not only cars that had them hence it would have taken a longer time for everyone to have them.
All I’m suggesting is that we don’t suddenly start cycling like crazy when we attach a light or lid…
Mikey, I believe there’s a
Mikey, I believe there’s a difference in having confidence you’ll be seen versus deliberatley putting yourself at risk. I suppose you’re ok so long as the increased confidence goes alongside the increased afety provided and doesn’t exceed it. As I say above, I’m not sure that common sense is suddenly likely to go out the window…
Like…
Like…
I can’t help but think of it
I can’t help but think of it being on a helmet and the effect every time the head is turned, combine that with music from the speakers and you have a nice confusing disco effect!
So, most cycling accidents
So, most cycling accidents happen in the day. Green lasers are illegal for road use (emitting green light reserved for doctors) and are invisible in the day anyway. So why did London pay a million for these? Total waste of money.
DA69 wrote:
It would be funny if these were actually illegal anyway.
I can’t imagine they’d be any use anyway once you got into an area full of other cyclists wearing the same helmets. Just a mass of distraction.