Snow Skate Patents Addendum

Yesterday’s Snow Skate post with Archie was so unpopular that I decided to follow it up with more research just to spite you, the reading audience. These snow/ski/skateboard patents started showing up as applications in 1977. Curiously, I couldn’t find anything going back earlier that had a skateboard as the foundation. I would have expected something to show up around 1965 but no dice. We’re focused on snow, leaving ice for a later post. At least two of the patents I found are so similar to the finished products in yesterday’s post that they must have been filed by the inventor or manufacturers of those products. One surprise was finding a 1977 patent for the modern day snow skate, the kind with a skateboard deck attached to one small ski.

I’m going to list these by application date, not by the date they were granted. The terminology is going to get confusing between many iterations and redundant uses of snow skate, snowskate, skateboard ski, skimboard, and even snowboard, but not in the way you’re used to what it refers to.

Skateboard Ski / Snow Skate

First up, the paperwork says “Skateboard Ski” but it’s got to be the Snow Skate! Donald R.Dotson and Ronald R.Smith filed this patent on March 7th of 1977, and patent 4116455 was granted on September 26, 1978. Interestingly, the patent illustrations show a version that attaches directly to the axels instead of the wheels. Great idea except physics would prevent you from mounting it unless you had a removable axle.

Excerpt: A skateboard ski apparatus wherein a skateboard platform and related skate trucks are combined with removable ski shoes.

Snow Ski Apparatus

On July 27 of 1977, Robert C. Weber applied for what would eventually become patent 4163565 which was granted on August 7th of 1979. This horrifyingly awkward contraption is the Snow Ski Apparatus. You could be forgiven for thinking Robert had no clue about what might work as far as boarding in the snow but in 1973 he applied for a patent that was a snowboard in everything but the name, which he called a mono-ski. It even has a sidecut. He received that patent in 1975. See the last two pictures in this block.

Snowboard

Next up, patent 4165091 was applied for on June 21st of 1977 and granted to Daniel E. Chadwick (Rutherford, NJ) on August 22st of 1979. At first glance this looks like an ice-board but those are in fact more or less the same thing as the first one in concept, so it’s confusing why it was granted. Maybe it’s because of the custom truck setup. Looks sketch. This invention is called a snowboard. I know it sounds weird and it doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

Excerpt: The present invention comprises a device for use on snow laden or covered surfaces which operates on the same general principle as a skateboard and is commonly termed herein as a snowboard.

Snow Ski Board Apparatus

Patent 4161323 was applied for by Canadian ( Burnaby, British Columbia ) inventor Maxwell T. Wetteland on October 3rd of 1977 and granted on July 7th of 1979. This is more or less the precursor to the modern day snowskate. Ok sure, there are two different types of modern “snowskate” or “snow skate.” One is basically a board with no trucks, and the other is a skateboard deck mounted to a single ski. Hang on… At first glance I thought this was just one ski but turns out it’s actually two…. Now that I think about it, this is kind of the same thing as the first one here (4116455) – same concept only with bigger runners. That back runner looks too long.

Excerpt: This invention relates to snow ski board apparatus that can be manipulated on snow in much the same way as an ordinary roller skate board is manipulated on a relatively hard surface.

Ski Board

Patent 4161324 was filed on January 3rd of 1978 by Christopher R. Colvin of San Clemente, California. This patent for a “Ski Board” was granted on July 17th of 1979. Again, this looks like the original Snow Skate (4116455) with the exception that the runners look like and are described as skis. It’s more or less the same thing as The first ski Board (4161323) except the runners mount directly to the trucks ended of the wheels.

Excerpt: …A somewhat comparable circumstance is applied to skating, namely roller skating, from which has developed the currently popular skate boards where, instead of there being a vehicle for each foot, there is provided a single board or platform for both feet of the rider, the board being one riding on a single set of fore and aft pairs of wheels. It is among the objects of the present invention to provide a somewhat comparable vehicle where runners replace wheels on a single board.

French Patent

There’s a 1978 French patent FR2420984 that I have been unable to find a picture of except for the one below. By the crude drawing it looks like the previous three patents. Searching for these in France is somehow not as straightforward as finding the US patents.There are some German and French patents from around the same time but none that I have found pictures of so far.

Ski Shoe Attatchment

On July 10th of 1978, Delbert Schrishuhn, Jr. applied for a patent for a “ski-shoe-attachment” that is essentially the same thing as the first Snow Skate except each wheel gets a little sled. So all he did was split the old invention in two. Well, that and replace rubber straps with hose clamps. Patent 4194753 was granted on March 25th of 1980.

Snow Vehicle

This looks like the Skeeter! This patent (4221394) for a Snow Vehicle was applied for own September 18th, 1978 and granted on September 9th, 1980. I’m not sure how these patents keep getting granted for what is essentially the same thing. The Skeeter looks just like the Snow Skate except the runners are phat and they attach directly to the newfangled trucks. Maybe it’s the trucks that earned them a patent. The first picture in this block is courtesy of the  Michigan Snowboarding Museum.

Snow Board

Now we have a European patent (EP81109379A) filed and granted in 1981 by Giulio Zuanetti. It’s more or less the ski-shoe-attachment (4194753) which is more or less the Skateboard Ski AKA Snow Skate.

Skateboard Ski With Spring Suspension

And from the 80’s we jump to 2005 and the patent that looks exactly like Railz. How this patent was awarded boggles the mind. There is some special attention paid to details on the runners, so maybe that’s why. In any case, congratulations to Brad Birdsell, Eric Raymond Hansen, and David M. Shipley out of Phoenix, Phoenix, and Peoria, Arizona respectively. Patent 7581735B2 was applied for in 2005 and granted in 2009. That’s 4 year delay. Remember the good ole days when you could a poly for a patent on an idea that already existed in various forms and have it granted in 2 years or less?

Excerpt: A skateboard / ski combination wherein the four wheels of a traditional skateboard have been removed, while the skate board trucks remain in place, and are then replaced with four ski apparatuses.

Wrap Up

I couldn’t find the patent for the skateboard mono ski that you see on the slopes now. Closest I could come was a 2001 Burton patent for a braking system for those types of boards. From the 90’s on the patent search results number in the 1000’s instead of the hundreds. I’ll leave that search to someone else.

If you learned one thing from this, it’s probably that we need some sort of patent-reform, and I’m not even talking about software wise, which is even more out of control.