Does anyone seriously want vaporflys banned?

Positive Contribution wrote:

HRE wrote:

The Vaporfly will not be banned. Nike has a lot of money, time, and effort invested in creating and marketing that shoe. Nike owns the sport and will not let the people who supposedly run it ban the Vaporfly.

Whether or not it should be banned is a matter of opinion. The problem with technological advances in a sport like athletics is that it makes comparisons of performances difficult. But we generally live with that as a rule though there is precedent for banning a shoe. My memory of this is very hazy, but one company, I think it was Puma, made a track shoe that had brushes in the place where spikes would normally be. Again, I'm very hazy on this, but I believe the brushes were supposed to perform better on the new at the time synthetic tracks than conventional spikes did and they were banned for giving an unfair advantage. Normally though, technology is accepted and even embraced. No one wants to bring back cinder tracks or bamboo vaulting poles, and most people get excited by indoor performances turned in on the new, high tech, tracks.

But the difference between those technologies and something like the Vaporfly is that the new technologies are available to every competitor. It's not like some pole vaulters got to use fiberglass while others had to keep using steel or bamboo. Everyone racing at the BU track or the one at Reggie Lewis Center benefits from those tracks. But the realities and economics of the sport mean that not everyone can race in Vaporflys and if the company some people run for has not created a show that gives a comparable boost, and perhaps cannot do so because of patent laws, those in the Vaporfly have an advantage. I think that is a situation that should be scrutinized, though I cannot believe that it will be.

So what about the Nike Zoom Victory possibly being superior?

zzzz wrote:

Abdoujaparov wrote:

This is the text (with my annotations in brackets):

Athletes may compete barefoot or with footwear on one or both feet. The purpose of shoes for competition is to give protection and stability to the feet and a firm grip on the ground. [The preceding sentence is bad drafting (and I say that as someone who drafts for a living). If it's not clear what purpose language serves it shouldn't be there. Nowhere in the rules is the specified "purpose" of shoes given any meaning. Deviating from that purpose doesn't mean they're illegitimate, Hewing to that purpose doesn't make shoes automatically legitimate. Bad bad bad.] Such shoes, however, must not be constructed so as to give athletes any unfair assistance or advantage. [There's no way to say $110 shoes that return X% of energy are fair and don't convey an advantage over a barefoot runner but $250 shoes that return X+10% don't. People want to see wiggle room here but there isn't any. Nike wins any litigation on this point. If you want to regulate their shoes you need tighter rules] Any type of shoe used must be reasonably available to all in the spirit of the universality of athletics. [This is the new bit but again you won't win a price based argument here if the delta is $100-$150 (and no-one's claiming that if Kosgei won in the Alpha%s that would have been ok).]

Here is how I think this portion of the rule should be interpreted and dealt with: "Such shoes, however, must not be constructed so as to give athletes any unfair assistance or advantage"

First of all, it's about the top of the sport. IAAF rules like whereabouts dope testing is really about the top of the sport. So, shoes for hobby joggers isn't really a concern. The "unfair advantage" isn't about $100 shoes vs. $250 shoes. It's also not about historical comparison, like the people here suggesting that any shoe is an advantage over barefoot, so it should be a free for all. It's about runners with different shoe sponsors being on a level playing field.

You might say that other shoe companies also have or are developing carbon plated distance running shoe, so all is fair. However, all the reviews of shoes like the Hoka carbon shoes or the Skechers, etc. indicate that they don't measure up to the Vaporfly models.

Nike has released a study showing how their shoe has an advantage over other shoes, including other carbon plated shoes. I've linked an Outside Online summary article in comments in other threads, but no one has said a word indicated that they've looked it it, so I'll summarize it instead. The study compared four otherwise identical shoes: A shoe with an extremely curved carbon plate (Vaporfly), the same shoe with a moderately curved carbon plate, and the same shoe with a flat carbon plate, and the same shoe with no plate. The extremely curved plate was quite a bit better than the other designs. The relative deficiencies with the flat plate design sounded a lot like what reviewers of the Hoka carbon plated shoes say, when compared to Vaporfly variants.

Nike has a patent over the part that gives them an advantage over other carbon plated shoes, the extreme curve shape of the shoes. In the current IAAF rules, there is Note (ii) that you didn't copy and paste into your comments along with the main part of the rule. It is here:

Note (ii): Where evidence is provided to the IAAF that a type of shoe

being used in competition does not comply with the Rules or the

spirit of them, it may refer the shoe for study and if there is

non-compliance may prohibit such shoes from being used in

competition.

Nike's own study should be submitted to the IAAF as evidence that it doesn't comply with the rules or the spirit of them, because it gives Nike runners an "unfair assistance or advantage" over other shoe sponsored athletes. I suggest that there are two ways for the IAAF to respond. One could be to prohibit the extremely curved plate. However, that's already years out of the bag. Instead, I think they need to pressure Nike to release that extremely curved plate patent for use by other shoe companies in exchange for not having it banned. Whether that patent should be released for a free or a nominal fee doesn't matter so much to me, but it needs to be in the hands of the other shoe makers who are struggling to get their flatter carbon plates to actually work well. That's how I interpret fairness under "Any type of shoe used must be reasonably available to all in the spirit of the universality of athletics. " In this case I see "type" as the extremely curved carbon plate that Nike uses, not a specific model (or banning prototypes that some here seem to want to do).

zzzz wrote:

Abdoujaparov wrote:

I read your article and it was very informative!

Do Nike really have a patent on a shape though? I'm not disputing it but i would be fascinated to read that.

It's not my article, but thanks for reading it. Yes, Nike has a patent on the spoon shape of the carbon plate. The patent has been mentioned in the LR forum many times since the Vaporfly came out, but people here never focused on the curved shape. The inclination has been to think carbon plates are all the same. But according to the Nike study, the magic is in the curved shape of the carbon plate, where it dips suddenly on the forefoot end. That's why they patented the shape in the first place. Carbon plates have been used in running shoes before, so the mere presence of the carbon plate isn't patentable.

Here's the description of the plate shape in the patent:

"The spring plate may extend through at least medial forefoot and medial midfoot regions and may have an unloaded shape in which a front portion of the spring plate in the forefoot region is downwardly bent relative to a rear portion of the spring plate located rearward of the front portion."

They have several embodiments of what is patented, with an inner sole (midsole) and without (presumeably track spikes), and also a removeable plate version, but all have that same shape.

That shape decreases work done by the big toe joint more than flatter plates, and doesn't have the disadvantage of increase ankle moment (over no plate) that flatter carbon plates do.

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2016179265A1/en

zzzz wrote:

Yes, Nike has winning those races because they have the athletes, but their shoe is also faster, and it's due to the patent. Read the media reviews and user reviews of the Hoka Carbon Rocket or Carbon X and other carbon plated shoes like the Skecher prototype, you'll see statements that, reading between the lines, match up with well with things in the Nike study on shape of different shoe plates. Flatter plates, which other companies have to use due to the Nike patent on the extreme curve version, increase ankle push-off moment over non-plated shoes, unlike the extreme curved version, so you need to use more calf. Flatter plates also don't save as much energy in the big toe joint. That's why after the Vaporfly came out, other companies rushed to try to copy it, but were very slow in releasing stuff (see long time before Hoka Carbon Rocket's rumors vs. release, and then poor reviews when compared to Vaporfly). They were tweaking and tweaking the prototypes, but couldn't get the same result without violating the patented shape.

Patent reader wrote:

zzzz wrote:

It's not my article, but thanks for reading it. Yes, Nike has a patent on the spoon shape of the carbon plate. The patent has been mentioned in the LR forum many times since the Vaporfly came out, but people here never focused on the curved shape. The inclination has been to think carbon plates are all the same. But according to the Nike study, the magic is in the curved shape of the carbon plate, where it dips suddenly on the forefoot end. That's why they patented the shape in the first place. Carbon plates have been used in running shoes before, so the mere presence of the carbon plate isn't patentable.

Here's the description of the plate shape in the patent:

"The spring plate may extend through at least medial forefoot and medial midfoot regions and may have an unloaded shape in which a front portion of the spring plate in the forefoot region is downwardly bent relative to a rear portion of the spring plate located rearward of the front portion."

They have several embodiments of what is patented, with an inner sole (midsole) and without (presumeably track spikes), and also a removeable plate version, but all have that same shape.

That shape decreases work done by the big toe joint more than flatter plates, and doesn't have the disadvantage of increase ankle moment (over no plate) that flatter carbon plates do.

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2016179265A1/en

Download the pdf. Read the descriptions and claims if you will but at all means, go past page 34 and look at the drawings. Downward bend is just downward bend, which is the opposite of the shape of the vaporfly. This patent is actually for a flat or spike with an agressive camber which the athlete has to load in order to get even flat against the track.

I am absolutely positive this patent does not protect the design of any of the vaporflies.