Re: 360 degree video real time... interested?

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"BruceR" <brNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

> While the point you're making is very valid, I think Bob Kearns'
> particular story is not the best example. He could have (and should
> have) taken the $30 million and enjoyed his life of leisure.  In this
> particular example he was just greedy.

I agree Kearns was not the best case, but it was the one I could remember!
I agree he was unrealistic in not settling but I also see how he could feel
if one car maker was willing to throw him a $30 million bone, the rest would
or should.  IIRC, by settling, he was losing the option of recovery from
other automakers.

Who knows what insane advice he was given by attorneys.  Attorneys that are
paid by the hour have this tendency to prolong rather than solve disputes.
For all I know Kearns went pro se and got the fool lawyer that old proverb
talks about.  Yes, he was not the best example but his case still shows how
long, bitter and unrewarding patent suits can be.  I think the inventor of
the Sears push-to-release fared somewhat better in the court system but
IIRC, he spent most of his life getting them to cough up the money.

Here's a case about a dead chicken washing patent/trade secret fight that's
par for the course:

http://www.citypages.com/databank/21/1022/article8789.asp

It also has a nice summation of the Sears dispute:

"Peter Roberts sued Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 1969 for patent infringement.
In 1964, when he was an 18-year-old Sears employee, Roberts had invented a
socket wrench. He sold the rights to the patent on the wrench to Sears for
$10,000. Roberts later argued that Sears deliberately underestimated the
tool's sales potential, which proved to be in the millions of dollars. He
eventually received an $8.5 million settlement from the retail giant in
1989--20 years after the case was filed."

How can justice take so long?  What kind of life would he have had had they
paid him, fair and square, right up front?

Armstrong's bitter and life-long patent troubles are the best example of the
effect of patent law on human beings.  He got screwed, and badly, by people
who once were his closest friends.  He gave many of his patents to the US
government gratis for use in W.W.II and advanced radio technology on a dozen
different fronts.  There's a great recounting of the story on the DVD
"Empire of the Air" by Ken Burns.  I highly recommend it.

> In fact, the story points out the dark side of inventors who think
> that they are entitled to way more than an invention is worth.  His
> desire for 1.6 billion demonstrates that he really didn't understand
> the commercial value of his invention.

I'm not sure that in the long run that invention didn't save the world's
carmakers at least that much.  I'd say, based on settlement offers I've seen
before, if Ford was offering $30M they thought they might be on the hook for
$100M.  Multiply that by the Big Three and the rest of the world's carmakers
and I can see where he got his pricing ideas.  I also think he included a
great deal of "punishment for stealing" money as punitive damages.  The $5M
jury verdict was way too low, IMHO, especially considering the first offer
from a single car maker.  It's pretty ironic that he could pull down a $5M
reward and still feel he got the royal screw.  What a world.

>  That being said, most cases of infringement are met with
>  attorneys who offer little or nothing and just bully the
> inventor into dropping his suit for little or no compensation.

The real inequity is in the creation of corporate entities that have many of
the rights of human beings, but also have the advantage of potentially
eternal life.  When you expect to live forever, you can simply play a
waiting game and grind down any poor, limited life span entity like a human
being.  Twenty years is nothing to Sears and if the plaintiff dies in the
meantime, they won't shed any tears.  I think that they prolong these things
HOPING that the inventor dies. Regrettably, things seem to be getting worse
instead of better in the Corporation V. Human department.  The Feds broke up
ATT as monopolistic but like the liquid metal Terminator, the pieces are
slowly joining back up to wreak havoc on consumers once again.

--
Bobby G.