According to Victor Major, a carbon expert and CEO of Taiwanese-Belgian bike brand Velocite, the recently-launched Pinarello Dogma F10 uses a design that he owns a patent for.
The issue concerns the concave downtube design, around the bottle cage, visible on the new Pinarello Dogma F10 as well as the latest Bolide time trial bike, released in May 2016.
Major has concern for the way it reflects the design on Velocite's Syn bike.
Velocite Syn downtube
"If we had not patented the concave down tube design I would have personally been very flattered that a noted bicycle brand like yours chose to use our design," said Major, who claims to hold three patents on the concave design, registered in both China and Taiwan.
"I initially alerted you to this issue in May 2016,"he said in an open letter published on the Velocite website.
"I observed our design and associated aerodynamic performance claim on the Bolide TT bike, only to be met with complete silence until July when three members of your engineering team checked out my LinkedIn profile for some reason.
"They did not talk to me, or anyone in our company."
Dogma F10 downtube
Major's legal team got in contact with those of Pinarello, and were told in August that they would recieve further correspondance in September 2016.
"Well it is now January 10th 2017 and there is still no response to our concerns," reads the letter. "Instead today you released your second model that uses our intellectual property, the new Pinarello Dogma F10."
"I could understand that perhaps you used our intellectual property by accident when you made the new Bolide TT," Major concludes.
"However, with the new Dogma F10 your use of our intellectual property is deliberate. You know it belongs to us. You were notified. You chose not to engage with us. What do you expect should happen next?"
Pinarello have made no public comment about the claims.