Sorry to hijack this post with non NP stuff ...
Going back to Steve's Severne; actually the leech is designed to do that. It's part of the 'Reflex' system where the back 20% of the batten is a separate piece and balloons the sail outwards when the gusts hit it for more power. Looks horrific when you see photos of it, but the concept seems to work very well as Steve was not going slow, and neither was Bjorn with the same concept on his slalom sails.
You can see the join which is the white sticker on the back part of the battens above the boom. If you've seen it in the flesh, they have a little mechanism that you can tighten/loosen the amount the extra batten piece can bend to suit your style. Probably not too dissimilar to the NP Evo II where they had a 45cm boom cut-in that allowed the back of the battens to bend outwards following the leech in a similar way...
That being said, the whole idea of an 'integrated clew', which you now see on the Evo III, does the complete OPPOSITE and locks those battens, which is like NP saying that there old idea didn't work at all ....