The Windsurfer patent runs out

US patent 3,487,800 for the Windsurfer, filed by Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake in 1968, was granted on 6 January 1970. For seventeen years it shaped the business: whoever wanted to sell sailboards in the United States paid Windsurfing International a licence fee or risked a lawsuit.

In England the corresponding British patent had already been revoked in court, with Peter Chilvers’ 1958 board as prior art. In the United States the patent held. A reissued version, granted in 1983, was tested on appeal, and on 28 January 1986 the court found its claims valid and infringed.

On 6 January 1987 the patent expired. A report on the American market that summer described a seventeen-year stranglehold that had run out. The president of F2’s American company put it simply: there were no longer licensing fees to pay.

European makers such as F2, Mistral and BIC were by then the industry leaders, and they now competed for American customers on equal terms.