Jim Drake (engineer)

Jim Drake's windsurfer prototype drawing

Drake hand built most of the original prototype components in his home garage in January 1967. He crafted the wishbone boom, center board and mast foot from laminated pine wood. The universal joint was built from marine stainless steel. The sail was cut and sewn by sail maker Bob Broussard into a triangular Bermuda rig. The custom board was built by Santa Monica surfboard maker Con Colburn. A repurposed hollow fiberglass racing dingy mast was sourced from a local marine outfitter. Schweitzer lacked the technical design background found in Drake, therefor Schweitzer's main contribution was to motivate Drake to complete the initial design phase and move forward with building and testing the prototype.

On May 21, 1967, Drake, along with his wife Wendy and daughter Stephanie went to Marina del Rey's Jamaica Bay to make history with the world's first modern sailboard. The Drake's were met by Broussard, the sailmaker, who happened to be passing by on his bicycle. The limited movement universal joint design failed, but the second, more flexible joint worked. Drake admits he had carefully thought through many of the complex ideas of control, but overlooked the simple need of raising the sail out of the water to begin sailing. He had always imagined the rider standing on the board with the sail in their hands and hadn't thought about how he would raise the sail from the water, so on that historic first day got Broussard to wade into the water to lift it from the water and hand it to him.[2] Complicating his first test run further was the fact that he forgot the skeg at home. 16mm film shot by Drake's wife on that first day is available on YouTube. Click the following link to watch Jim Drake teach himself windsurfing.

Having remembered to insert a skeg the second time, Drake added a lanyard (now called an uphaul) by which he could stand up and haul his own sail out of the water. Returning to Marina del Rey two weeks later, Drake was impressed enough by the improved prototype to allow Schweitzer to arrange a launch party for what they had called the "Skate."[2]

However, they found another company had already used the name "Skate" and were preparing to copyright it, so decided on the name "Baja Board." While developing the design and patent paperwork, in late 1967/early 1968, Schweitzer was showing a prototype "Baja Board" in Seattle, when Public Relations man Bert Salisbury stopped his car to have a look, and commented: "Gee I have the perfect name for it! The windsurfer!"[2]

The details of the original designs are available in Drake's white paper on windsurfing, and these interviews with Jim Drake.[3][4] Despite forty years of subsequent development, the design is still remarkably similar to today's windsurfing equipment, and the word "windsurfer" has become synonymous with the sport itself. There is also a video of Drake's early attempts to teach himself windsurfing.

In 1968, Drake and Schweitzer together as individuals filed the very first windsurfing patent, which was granted by the USPTO in 1970.[5] There is no evidence that they had knowledge of any prior inventions similar to theirs, but Drake accepts in retrospect that although he can be credited with invention, he was "probably no better than third," behind Englishman Peter Chilvers and mid-west based Newman Darby.[2] The patent was wholly licensed by Drake and Schweitzer to Windsurfing International.[2]

Subsequently, in 1968, Drake and Schweitzer founded the company Windsurfing International in Southern California to manufacture, promote and license a windsurfer design. 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 late 1968, Schweitzer found himself out of work after his computer analysis business collapsed. He and his family moved to Newport Beach, where producing and selling windsurf boards became his financial lifeline. At the same time Drake's aeronautical engineering career was accelerating. Drake accepted a two-year, out of state, work assignment at the Pentagon, and moved his family to Washington DC. Immediately after Drake got settled in at his new location, Schweitzer started aggressively pressuring Drake to sell his half of the patent. Drake was surprised by the situation and did not want to sell his interest in the sailboard he had created. Having returned to California, in 1973 Drake sold his half of the patent to Windsurfing International for the sum of $36,000.[2]

Through the seventies, Schweitzer aggressively promoted and licensed the Windsurfing International design and licensed the patent to manufacturers worldwide. The sport underwent very rapid growth, particularly in Europe after the sale of a sub-license sold to Ten Cate in the Netherlands.[2]

At the same time, Schweitzer also sought to defend his patent rights vigorously against unauthorized manufacturers. This led to a host of pre-dating 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.[6] 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 single 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. They also found stories published about the 1964 invention of the Darby Sailboard by Newman Darby in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. .[7]

In Windsurfing International Inc. v Tabur Marine (GB) Ltd. 1985 RPC 59, with Tabur backed financially by French sailing fanatic 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 split 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 lost again. After the cases, no longer obliged to pay Windsurfing International and royalty payments, the now renamed Bic Sport became the world's largest producer of windsurfing equipment, with an annual production of 15,000 boards.[6]

In 1983, Schweitzer sued Swiss board manufacturer Mistral, which is today still a major sailboard manufacturer, and lost. Mistral's defense hinged on the work of US inventor Newman Darby, who in the mid-sixties conceived the "sailboard": a hand-held square rigged "kite" sail on a floating platform for recreational use. Darby's published version did not show any connection between the rig and the board (the mast simply rested in a depression on the board) but it did refer to a "more complex swivel step for advanced riders not shown". He published his "sailboard" design in August 1965 Popular Science magazine. Darby organized Darby Industries Inc in 1964 to build these sailboards.[8][9][10][11] However, the sailboard never gained popularity, and Darby's company ceased operations by the end of the 1960s.

Eventually US courts recognized the Schweitzer windsurfer as an obvious step from Chilvers prior art.[12] 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.[13]

In 1983, Australian courts reported a patent case in "Intellectual Property Reports" 3 IPR 449, attributed the first legally accepted use 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 near his home on the Swan River in Perth. There is no evidence that any of the later "inventors" ever sighted the Eastaugh craft of a decade earlier on the other side of the world.

It is acknowledged that the separate Chilvers, Darby inventions all pre-dated the Drake and Schweitzer patent.[2]