Windsurfing

Windsurfing is a surface water sport that combines elements of surfing and sailing. It consists of a board usually 2 to 3 meters long, with a volume of about 60 to 250 liters, powered by wind on a sail. The rig is connected to the board by a free-rotating universal joint and consists of a mast, 2-sided boom and sail. The sail area generally ranges from 2.5 m2 to 12 m2 depending on the conditions, the skill of the sailor and the type of windsurfing being undertaken.

Some credit S. Newman Darby with the origination of windsurfing by 1964 on the Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania, USA when he invented the "sailboard", which, incidentally, he did not patent. In 1964, Darby began selling his sailboards. A promotional article by Darby was published in the August 1965 edition of Popular Science magazine.

While Darby's "sailboard" incorporated a pivoting rig, it was "square rigged" and suffered all the associated limitations. You operated the sailboard with your back to the lee side of the kite shaped square sail. Darby's article boasted that "...you can learn to master a type of manoeuvering that's been dead since the age of the picturesque square riggers"


Darby sailboard, Popular Science, 1965
Windsurfing can be said to straddle both the laid-back culture of surf sports and the more rules-based environment of sailing. Although it might be considered a minimalistic version of a sailboat, windsurfing offers experiences that are outside the scope of other sailing craft designs. Windsurfers can perform jumps, inverted loops, spinning maneuvers, and other "freestyle" moves that cannot be matched by any sailboat. Windsurfers were the first to ride the world's largest waves, such as Jaws on the island of Maui, and, with very few exceptions, it was not until the advent of tow-in surfing that waves of that size became accessible to surfers on more traditional surfboards. Extreme waves aside, many expert windsurfers will ride the same waves as wavesurfers do (wind permitting) and are themselves usually very accomplished without a rig on a conventional surfboard.

At one time referred to as "surfing's ginger haired cousin" by the sport's legendary champion, Robby Naish, windsurfing has long struggled to present a coherent image of the sport to outsiders. As a result of attempts to claim the word "windsurfer" as a trademark, participants have been encouraged to use different names to describe the sport, including "sailboarding" and "boardsailing". The term "windsurfing" has persisted as the accepted name for the sport, and the word "windsurfer" persists for both participants and equipment.

Windsurfing is predominately undertaken on a non-competitive basis. Organised competition does take place at all levels across the world and typical formats for competitive windsurfing include Formula Windsurfing, speed sailing, slalom, course racing, wave sailing, superX, and freestyle. These events are exciting to watch as sailors push the limits both physically and creatively with moves that look as impossible as thinking them up in the first place.

The boom of the 1980s led windsurfing to be recognized as an Olympic sport in 1984. However, windsurfing's popularity saw a sharp decline in the mid-1990s, thanks to licensing battles, and equipment becoming more specialized and requiring more expertise to sail. The sport experienced a modest revival, as new beginner-friendly designs became available. Further pressure came as a proportion of avid windsurfers took up the similar sport of kitesurfing.

Windsurfing International
On March 27, 1968, Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake filed the very first windsurfing patent, which was granted by the USPTO in 1970. There is no evidence that they had knowledge of any prior inventions similar to theirs, but Drake accepted in retrospect that although he can be credited with invention, he was "probably no better than third," behind mid-west based Newman Darby and Englishman Peter Chilvers.

The early windsurfing boards were made of foam in the garages of Schweitzer and Drake, with the booms, tees and daggerboards hand crafted in teak. Hoyle sub-contracted the manufacture of the teak items to boat builder Ennals Ives in Taiwan, but the quality and costs of transportation brought other issues. One of the early customers was Bert Salisbury, and the first international shipment of a container of boards went to Sweden. Early customers also included Lufthansa pilots who had read about the board, who simply included one as personal luggage on their return journey from Los Angeles International Airport.

To ensure the quality of the product and handle marketing, in 1968 Hoyle and Diana Schweitzer founded the company Windsurfing International in Southern California to manufacture, promote and license a windsurfer design. The jointly owned patent was wholly licensed to Windsurfing International. Working in a factory unit in Torrance, California, Hoyle, who had previously built personal surf boards in his garage, was unhappy with the durability of the early "Baja Board." He therefore developed a new mould, based on an old Malibu surfboard design that Matt Kivlin had developed, which the company sub-contracted for mass manufacture to Elmer Good.

The company registered the term "windsurfer" as a trademark at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1973, launching the craft as a one-design class. Going one-design was influenced by the success of the Laser and Hobie Cat classes. Each Windsurfer had an identical computer-cut sail, a technology new at that time and pioneered by Ian Bruce and the Laser class.

In 1968, Hoyle's computer business collapsed, and he and Diane moved to Newport Beach; at the same time Drake accepted a two-year assignment to The Pentagon, and moved to Washington DC. Immediately, Hoyle offered Drake to buy out his half of the patent, and it was only when Hoyle pointed out ownership of the company that the relationship between the pair began to fall apart. Having returned to California, in 1973 Drake sold his half of the patent to Windsurfing International for the sum of $36,000.

Patent disputes
Through the seventies, Schweitzer aggressively promoted and licensed the Windsurfing International design and licensed the patent to manufacturers worldwide, mainly through competition and the publication of a magazine. As a result, the sport underwent very rapid growth, particularly in Europe after the sale of a sub-license sold to Ten Cate in the Netherlands.

At the same time, Schweitzer also sought to defend his patent rights vigorously against unauthorized manufacturers. This led to a host of predating windsurfer-like devices being presented to courts around the world by companies disputing Windsurfing International's rights to the invention.

(In 1979, Schweitzer licensed Brittany, France-based company Dufour Wing, which was later merged with Tabur Marine – the precursor of Bic Sport. Dufour was not licenced!) Europe was now the largest growing market for windsurfers, and the sub-licensed companies – Tabur, F2, Mistral – wanted to find a way to remove or reduce their royalty payments to Windsurfing International.

Tabur lawyers found prior art, in a local English newspaper which had published a story with a picture about Peter Chilvers, who as a young boy on Hayling Island on the south coast of England, assembled his first board combined with a sail, in 1958. This board used a universal joint, one of key parts of the Windsurfing International's patent. They also found stories published about the 1948 invention of the sailboard by Newman Darby and his wife Naomi in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

In Windsurfing International Inc. v Tabur Marine (GB) Ltd. 1985 RPC 59, with Tabur backed financially by French sailing fan Baron Marcel Bich, British courts recognized the prior art of Peter Chilvers. It did not incorporate the curved wishbone booms of the modern windsurfer, but rather a "straight boom" that became curved in use. The courts found that the Schweitzer windsurfer boom was "merely an obvious extension". It is worthy of note that this court case set a significant precedent for patent law in the United Kingdom, in terms of inventive step and non-obviousness; the court upheld the defendant's claim that the Schweitzer patent was invalid, based on film footage of Chilvers. Schweitzer then sued the company in Canada, where the opposition team again financially backed by Bic included Chilvers and Jim Drake, and Schweitzer lost again. After the cases, no longer obliged to pay Windsurfing International any royalty payments, the now renamed Bic Sport became the world’s largest producer of windsurfing equipment, with an annual production of 15,000 boards.

In 1983, Schweitzer sued Swiss board manufacturer Mistral and lost. Mistral's defense hinged on the work of US inventor Newman Darby, who by 1965 conceived the "sailboard": a hand-held square rigged "kite" sail on a floating platform for recreational use.

Eventually US courts recognized the Schweitzer windsurfer as an obvious step from Darby's prior art. Schweitzer had to reapply for a patent under severely limited terms, and finally it expired in 1987. Shortly thereafter, having lost its license royalty income, Windsurfing International ceased operations.

In 1984, Australian courts determined a patent case: Windsurfing International Inc & Anor -v- Petit & Anor (also part reported in 3 IPR 449 or [1984] 2 NSWLR 196), which attributed the first legally accepted use of a split boom to an Australian boy, Richard Eastaugh. Between the ages of ten and thirteen, from 1946 to 1949, aided by his younger brothers, he built around 20 galvanized iron canoes and hill trolleys which he equipped with sails with split bamboo booms. He sailed these in a sitting position and not as a windsurfer standing up, near his home on the Swan River in Perth. The judge noted that, "Mr Eastaugh greatly exaggerated the capacity of his galvanised iron canoes to sail to windward" and that, "There is no corroboration of Mr Eastaugh's experiences by any other witness. Neither of his brothers or his father was called".

It is acknowledged in the courts that the separate Eastaugh (1946–1949), Darby (1965) and Chilvers (1958) inventions pre-dated the Schweitzer/Drake patent (1968).

Trademark disputes
Windsurfing International claimed trademark rights with respect to the word "windsurfer". While this was registered in the United States for some years, it was not accepted for registration in many jurisdictions as the word was considered too descriptive. Registration was ultimately lost in the United States for the same reason.

The Schweitzers initially chose the word for its descriptive quality. Unfortunately they immediately set out diminishing its value by naming their company "Windsurfing International" and even referring to themselves and their own children as "windsurfers".

As the word was rejected as registrable in a number of countries, lawyers advised that to be successful the word would have to be used as a proper adjective. They realised that this required a number of generic nouns to which the adjective would apply: sailboard, boardsailing, planche a voile, segelbrett and so on. The rearguard action was ultimately unsuccessful and arguably created considerable confusion which hampered marketing efforts in later years.

Marketing
While the numerous patent and trademark disputes have left an unfortunate legacy, the fact is that these disputes did not occur until well after Windsurfing International, its licensees, class associations, retailers, schools and owners had built the sport to a successful commercial basis. That success bought imitation and then legal disputes.

The launch phase saw a comprehensive development of infrastructure for a new sport and dramatic sales growth.