'Chicken loop' wrangle: Kiteboard safety-release inventors blame legal blunder for millions lost
‘We are dreamers. We are inventors. We are not patent lawyers,’ says kiteboard safety innovator
Vancouver Island inventors who pioneered kiteboarding safety are fighting in B.C. Supreme Court for millions they claim they lost due to a patent filing error that created a legal loophole.
Kiteboarders balance on a board similar to a small surfboard and hold onto cables attached a kite they control to propel themselves across water.
The self-described quartet of "dreamers" who spend most of their days on the waves say they filed a draft patent for a hand-operated quick-release safety device back in 2001, but it was never properly finalized so they lost credit for their brainchild.
"Before we came along, people were killing themselves and now it's very unusual to hear of a death in kiteboarding," said Richard Myerscough of Ocean Rodeo Sports.
The "chicken loop" device, or trim loop, allows a surfer to break off from the kite so they are not dragged by strong winds.
The slang term for the device was coined by surfers who mocked anybody who needed an escape device as a "chicken."
Myerscough claims a Hawaiian competitor, Nalu Kai, filed its own patent for a similar, "chicken loop," years after he did with Ocean Rodeo Sports.
Ocean Rodeo Sports was eventually sued by Nalu Kai who won the legal rights for the mechanism.
The two settled by striking a deal that stipulated Ocean Rodeo pay $7.50 per device, which has added up to more than $100,000 in licensing fees.
Patent tangle thickens
Now Ocean Rodeo is suing a retired patent lawyer and his firm.
The company claims that a missed deadline coupled with a poor description of their invention cost them profits.
The complicated patent case heads to trial in July where the inventors hope to prove they invented the popular "chicken loop" release first, but lost the rights because of legal mistakes.
In a case like this between licensing fees, lost royalties and legal costs an award could amount to millions, the plaintiff says.
The patent law firm that is the defendant in the case says it's not responsible for losses that the inventors claim, despite a date error that led to a missed deadline.
Ocean Rodeo claims that the final patent paperwork also failed to describe their hand-operated trim loop release device.
The firm, Oyen Wiggs Green & Mutala LLP says the inventors should have reviewed the details in their final patent and corrected any errors, in court documents.
The law firm refused comment about the case before it is heard in court.
As for any royalties paid a competitor for patent infringement, Oyen Wiggs argues in their statement of defence that there was no need to pay royalties to the competing kiteboard company because Ocean Rodeo did not have a patent for the same thing.
'Chicken loop' conundrum
Myerscough admits he relied on his legal team for advice because he's been obsessed with kiteboarding since the sport emerged in the 1990s, and admits paperwork is not his forte.
"We have these ideas because we spend a lot of time on the water. We are dreamers. We are inventors. We are not patent lawyers," said Myerscough.
He competed in the Seoul Olympics as a windsurfer in 1988 and passed the bug for kiteboarding to his 19-year-old son, Reece.
Myerscough and friends spent summers cobbling together "hilarious" home-made gear — using pop bottles for flotation and boat winches for rigging — and pioneering safety in the exhilarating but potentially dangerous sport.
"We spent a lot of time swimming and getting dragged," says Myerscough who broke his own leg and heel after getting slammed into the water in 2000.
Either way the inventors of the "chicken loop" believe they've prevented countless "kite-mares" in a sport where accidental deaths are now as rare as chickens on surf boards.