How a patent stifled the growth of disc golf
In 1986 a US patent for the concept of bevelled-edged flying discs was incorrectly granted. The result was to slow the growth of disc golf and reduce competition in the golf disc market for almost 20 years. This piece is NOT an attack on Innova Champion Discs.
Declaration: I am not a fan of patents despite having obtained two Provisional Patent Specifications in the past. I always figured if I made $200K out of any invention of mine, I would consider myself extremely fortunate indeed. And if someone ever copied my designs, I’d simply add “Often Copied But Never Equalled” to my marketing materials, and feel very flattered. These days I happily give my inventions away for free.
I do this because in my opinion patents hurt society: they function effectively to restrict manufacturers and markets, hold prices high, reduce innovation, decrease consumer choice, and slow down progress.
If you invent something, your natural and very great advantage is to be first to market with it. No company should ever need more incentive than this, as I will show below.
The best example of why patents are bad, are patent troll companies whose only reason for existence is to extract royalties from companies who dare to use technology which has been in the market place for some time. Please Note: The words "royal" and "royalty" often indicate entrenched unfairness relating to historical abuse of power.
The bevelled-edge golf disc patent
There is probably no blame to attach to the harm done to disc golf, as it was almost certainly a necessary part of doing business in the USA; when Innova approached venture capitalists for funding to ramp up their business it is highly likely any potential funding would be conditional on having some form of Intellectual Property which could be legally protected.
But, what a situation this created!
An environment where all aspiring golf disc makers were strongly discouraged from starting up in competition with Innova.
The wrongly-awarded and unenforceable patent
In order for a patent to be granted in the USA an invention must be novel, and non-obvious. The bevelled-edge disc patent fails to meet either criterion. Injection-moulded discs already had a lengthy history, and so prior art had been in the marketplace for some time – another nail in the coffin of the bogus patent.
The bevelled-edge was a natural progression from a non-bevelled edge, and it is an obvious development. So the patent should never have been granted. Hence a legal challenge to the patent's validity would easily succeed.
How much did Innova make in royalties?
We know from old Discraft discs, which featured the legend “Licensed under U.S. Patent No. 4568297” embossed on the lower surface of the flightplate, that Discraft did negotiate with Innova to produce golf discs. But of course, the details of that agreement remain private, and so we cannot know how much Innova made from their patent.
What we can say with certainty is that the patent held back many potential entrants into the golf disc market for 17 years. Golf discs are not expensive to make, and large amounts of capital are not required to start up a company with just one or two moulds. However, the burden of negotiating a license with Innova and paying royalty fees is a major disincentive to working towards that goal.
By the official PDGA numbers
Below are charts created with data taken directly from the PDGA website.
The years of patent protection covered 1986 through 2003. During that time the industry saw just six new disc manufacturers of PDGA-approved golf discs. Since 2003 there have been more than 120 new manufacturers.
Now we move to the number of new disc moulds approved each year by the PDGA. This chart too, shows that during the period 1986 to 2003 there was little in the way of innovation and the numbers of new discs available grew at a slow pace of between 8-14 new moulds each year.
Compare this to 2022, when the PDGA approved over 200 new moulds - or one every 50 hours on average!
What would disc golf look like today, if not for the patent?
This is hard to say. Disc golf was certainly gaining in popularity in the year 2000, but it was still very much a fringe sport.
I distinctly remember in 2000, pushing for disc golf in Christchurch city, which I had returned to after 12 years in Queenstown; no one I spoke to had any idea what disc golf was, and I had to explain it many times in those early years.
So, it seems to me the slow growth of disc golf up until 2003 or so was priming the pump in terms of encouraging new golf disc makers to emerge, and the trickle of new manufacturers before 2003, quickly turned into a flood.
I maintain it was all down to the patent: it lapsed, and disc golf exploded.
Contributing factors
YouTube arrived on the web in 2006 with just 30,000 daily visitors, and not many people had strong enough Internet connections for good video, nor were cameras cheaply available which could easily shoot high-quality video. 360p and even 480p video do not lend themselves to viewing disc golf, especially at 25 or even 30 frames per second.
But from 2010 on, disc golf began to become popular at YouTube, and this has certainly assisted the growth.
Because disc golf ticks every box imaginable, along with it using the margins of public spaces, it being cheap to install, entirely informal, and free to play with low-priced equipment, it is the ultimate democratic and inclusive sporting activity for human beings.
The natural advantages and benefits of disc golf are apparent to anyone who plays the game, and obvious to those who know about it, but have yet to play. This caused naturally slow but progressive growth up until the Innova patent lapsed.
It's worth noting also, that an exponential curve appears to be almost flat during the early stages of growth. It's not until the numbers reach a certain point that the slope of the graph changes, and begins to rapidly steepen.
People sometimes mistakenly believe disc golf exploded from nothing after 2000 - but the truth is that myself, and people like me, all over the world had been pushing disc golf hard for a long time before that explosive growth began.
And that explosive exponential growth required a threshold of support before it could take place.
Rounds played are more than doubling every year
Here in Christchurch/Otautahi, the uDisc stats for 2020 and 2021 shows growth of greater than 100% per year. From 61,000 total rounds played in 2020, to 123,000 in 2021. This is phenomenal, and very noteworthy considering both years were affected by Covid (below!) and courses were closed for non-trivial amounts of time.
Cranking up the Retrospectoscope
Despite knowing what did actually happen in disc golf during the years prior to 2003, it is extremely difficult to focus the Retrospectoscope sufficiently to make an accurate estimate regarding just how much the game was held back by the patent.
It is certainly true that without the patent, the growth we have seen since 2003 would not have begun in 1986 instead, because disc golf was still a fledgling game (and sport), and there were insufficient players worldwide to tempt many disc golfers into taking up the challenge of making their own discs.
But it is also certain the patent did affect the uptake and proliferation of disc golf to some extent. The patent successfully worked to keep prices higher, reduce innovation (which is ironic on at least two levels), kept the competition to a bare minimum; and anyone who licensed the Innova patent was immediately on the back foot, having to compete with Innova, as well as paying them for the privilege of doing so!
How badly was disc golf affected?
I doubt anyone can say at this time. But it seems likely future researchers will be able to successfully simulate the growth of disc golf using huge swathes of data such that it correctly matches the observed facts, and thus will be able to effectively wind back the clock. My best estimate is that disc golf may have been up to twice as popular in the year 2003 without the patent than with it.
Early suppression has a huge and permanent downstream impact
We have all learned from the disastrous COVID-19 virus that early suppression is extremely effective in stopping exponential growth. And, once suppression is lifted exponential growth resumes immediately.
Superimposed, the two graph shapes are the same, but one is permanently shifted right, and the difference in totals between the two, when projected into the future is staggering. The suppressed numbers are shown in yellow.
For disc golf, the gap (yellow) between the two graphs (existing numbers vs. the hypothetical unsuppressed numbers) is massive in terms of total number of rounds played, and so even though the patent lapsed over 20 years ago its effects continue to this day, with the total number of rounds-not-played reaching into the tens of millions. This is a genuine disc golf tragedy. Even if you accept the patent had only a small suppressing effect, you must also accept this only makes the yellow part of the above graph smaller, and does not eliminate it.
The situation today, and into the future
Today, in 2024, we’re all tremendously happy disc golf is continuing to explode all over the world. I predict that by 2030 there will be roughly 40-million disc golfers worldwide, playing on close to 30,000 DGCs, and the PDGA will have around 200,000 paid-up members.
A special mention regarding MVP and their over-mould patent
It is self-evident to me MVP don't need a patent, nor should they have been granted one. This is another obvious solution to the problem of wanting plastics with different properties, in the same disc.
Their patent is technically worthless mainly because the technological prowess, experience, and skill to produce a first-rate dual-moulded disc is far more difficult to achieve than the concept of over-moulding itself. And here at Vortica we know this due to the number of defective Nova XTs we have received from Innova Champion Discs. In MVP's case, their patent protects nothing, while their genuine Intellectual Property: their amazing skill and experience after decades of over-moulding for the automotive industry, is what truly protects their designs and their market share. No one else can match MVP, apart from Latitude 64, who tried (and failed) to grab a share of the dual-mould market created by MVP.
Summing up
All inventors and creators stand on the shoulders of giants, and original ideas and inventions can be extremely valuable to society, but these ideas all stem from previous ones in one way or another. It does not benefit society to allow the inventors or creators of new ideas to protect those ideas in any way, shape, or form.
Intellectual property is a tricky subject indeed, and I do not know what a fair solution to it is, but I do know the existing system is designed to enrich patent holders beyond what is reasonable, and it hurts progress, and hence society as a result.
And disc golf was - and unavoidably remains - the loser. What do you think? Please click the heart icon below if this piece caused your brain to experience thoughts. And then let us know what those thoughts are in the comments below. Thank you kindly, and,
Kia tika te rere - Enjoy the flight!
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