Snowboarding has boomed in popularity in the last 25 years or so. From its underground roots where the first few pioneering boarders were shunned from all but a few ski areas, to its wide acceptance at areas throughout the world, snowboarding truly is a study in transformation. And as certain less tangible aspects of the world of snowboarding—public perception, acceptance, demography of participants—have changed, so too have its more tangible aspects, including, most notably, board design. As boarders brought their craft into more challenging, demanding realms—backcountry, halfpipe, snowboard race courses, snowboard parks filled with rail slide objects, and even stair rails in city centers—board designs evolved. However, most board design efforts from the inception of snowboarding have focused most on board materials—the actual profiles of the lower surfaces of boards, although certainly changing over the years, have seen comparatively little design attention. The changes that have occurred include: (a) impartation of a camber from tip section to tip section; (b) impartation of a curved, reverse camber (or curved rocker) profile to the board along the entire length of the board (from tip section to tip section); and (c) in a different design, impartation of a curved rocker to an area from between a point under one mount region of a board to another point under the board's other mount region. The rocker designs have received considerable acceptance among the boarding community. Once boarders get used to the rocker, they like it; as compared with traditional “flat” board or boards with a centrally located single camber, it offers more maneuverability with a slicker, less constrained feel and a smoother sense of handling. It is without question a significant advancement in board profile design.
An industry observer might conclude that the rocker is the ultimate—and perhaps final—evolutionary mutation in snowboard design. After all, what's been called the “dual camber” board design had already been introduced (see U.S. Pat. No. 5,823,562 and PCT Publication No. WO 99/10053), and now with the two above-discussed rocker designs, one might think that there is no longer any room left to do anything to board profiles that would represent a performance improvement, even if only for a certain specialized ride (half pipe or racing, as but two examples). After all, one might think “how much can be done with the underside of a snowboard?” The inventors of the inventive technology disclosed in this disclosure asked this very question and, after experimental testing of their inventive design concept, have found a new and different design that offers significant advantages relative to all known types of boards.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds