Francois Gissy set the world record for fastest bike ride last weekend, topping out at 207 mph on .... a bicycle. The craziest part is he hit 207 mph in 4.8 seconds (for context, the Ferrari F430 he was racing hit 62 mph in 4.0 seconds).
He broke the record in the south of France, but if he hadn't filed a patent application prior to his run, his rights expired even faster. Some countries, such as France, require absolute novelty in order to obtain a patent. This means that any sale or public display of the item prior to filing a patent application (even if the display only takes 4.8 seconds) bars patentability in those countries. Most of the countries in Europe follow this rule, including the U.K., Spain, France, Germany and Italy.
In the United States we have a more lenient rule. In the United States, we have a one-year statutory bar. This means that from the time Francois Gissy unpacks his bike for the media, if the thing is patentable, he has one year to file a patent application in the United States.
Since you were thinking it, Francois' heirs would be entitled to seek patent protection in the United States "on the same terms and conditions applicable to the inventor." This means that if Francois had survived for 3 of the 4.8 seconds of his ride, his heirs would still have a year to file a patent application in the United States. As you might have suspected, this requires some additional forms.
The text of the statute creating the one-year grace period in the United States can be found here. Lexology has a good, very in depth, discussion of the on sale bar under the current statute. More information about what qualifies as a sale or publication can be found at the United States Patent & Trademark Office's website. Gizmodo also has an interesting interview with Francois.
Disclaimer: The Huffington Post reports that Exotic Thermo Engineering and Arnold Neracher (a friend of Francois) have been attributed with designing the bike. I have no idea whether Francois was a co-inventor or not.
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