Power Points: A patent fight between Emirates Team New Zealand and North Sails has spread from a Virginia courtroom to a New Zealand arbitration, and the outcome could shape what goes up the mast in Naples.
The America’s Cup has never been short of lawyers and with Naples nine months away, they are getting more time on the water than some of the sailors.
On 15 September, North Sails sued Team New Zealand and its sail designer Stephen Collie in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The target is US Patent 12,110,089, “Sail structure”, granted in October 2024 with Collie named as inventor.
It covers an elastic luff that lets the AC75’s twin-skin mainsail change shape quickly once the boat is foiling.
North says the key ideas came from its own designer, Matt Savage, and were shared with Team New Zealand during years of collaboration. It also accuses the Defender of using the patent to threaten North and its challenger customers.
CEO Grant Dalton has called the suit a spurious attempt to intimidate, saying North knew of the patent for more than five years, built Team NZ’s sails using the technology and contractually acknowledged the team’s ownership.
In Dalton’s telling, the US action is a response to arbitration Team NZ launched in New Zealand over alleged misuse of the technology. North’s earlier challenge before the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board was rejected in January.
None of these claims has been tested.
Strip out the carbon fibre and this is a textbook commercial IP fight. Inventorship and ownership are different questions. A contract can allocate ownership of an invention, but it cannot make someone an inventor under US patent law, and proving inventorship does not automatically hand over commercial control.
For New Zealand tech companies working with overseas suppliers, the lesson is blunt: collaboration agreements need to deal with how inventions are conceived, recorded and patented, not just who owns them and who keeps quiet.
The British subplot
North Sails’ owner, Oakley Capital, has taken a majority stake in GB1, Britain’s challenger. Team NZ has reportedly warned challengers they risk infringing the patent, and North has reportedly floated making challenger sails in Sri Lanka, beyond its reach.
The Match starts in Naples on 10 July 2027. The Eastern District of Virginia is famously fast. Whether it is fast enough is another question.
The America’s Cup may be won on the water. The right to use what goes up the mast is being decided on land.
