New Wave-Making Technology Touches Off San Diego’s Wave War

Wave Loch founder Thomas J. Lochtefeld holds for technology he began commercializing in 1991 for his “FlowRider” wave machines. The FlowRider, which propels a sheet of water up a contoured, wave-shaped form, has been installed at more than 50 sites throughout the United States, in at least 38 foreign countries, and on five cruise ships. Lochtefeld’s lawsuit seeks monetary damages and a court order that would effectively put the McFarlands out of business.

Lochtefeld told me in an e-mail that he had hired Bruce McFarland in the early 1990s as a contract draftsman and engineer, and that McFarland had access to Wave Loch’s design schematics, proprietary know-how, trade secrets, and intellectual property. “Without getting into technicalities,” Lochtefeld wrote, “I believe that my attorneys have set forth detailed infringement contentions that AWM has not rebutted and that Bruce McFarland developed and began selling his infringing device despite full knowledge of my patents.”

AWM denied Lochtefeld’s allegations in a formal legal response filed last July, and in November AWM requested a legal stay of the infringement suit until the U.S. Patent Office can review all of Wave Loch’s patent claims and reconsider the validity of its patents. In a Feb. 19 order, U.S. District Judge Michael M. Anello granted the stay—which halts the litigation until the patent review has been completed, a process estimated to take two years.

McFarland, on the advice of his attorney, declined to discuss Lochtefeld’s lawsuit. But he says his wave technology is fundamentally different from Wave Loch’s.

McFarland says the FlowRider produces a pressurized sheet of water that’s only several inches deep—too thin to allow surfers to use a conventional surfboard with stabilizing fins. McFarland says his SurfStream uses a greater volume of water (the machine’s pool typically holds 50,000 gallons) that flows deeper and at a lower speed, producing a standing wave that can rise as high as three feet. “It allows you to use a regular board with fins, that’s the main difference,” McFarland told me.

In another advance, McFarland said he’s been able to use software to manipulate the shape of the SurfStream standing wave. By using a computer to control

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.