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Blue LED Inventor Loses Patent Fight
Swamp writes "Just a little heads-up for you engineers. The Mainichi Daily News is running this story saying 'A Nobel Prize candidate who invented a blue light-emitting diode (LED) used for display panels has no patent rights over the product as he conceded it to his former employer, a court ruled Thursday.'
'Japan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors.' I guess not even being a Nobel Prize [contender] gives you credit anymore." His 20,000 yen bonus is about US$162 now.
intellectual property is boooooring!
I read that Steve Wozniak wanted blue LEDs to line the underground caves he build for his autistic son, but back in 1993 or 4 when it was constructed, no one made blue LEDs.
So, Woz apparently had to buy 100,000 of them (at something like $3-4 each) even though he only needed a few thousand, the rest ended up being sold in smaller lots and "jump starting" blue LED availability, at least here on the West Coast.
Does anyone out there happen to know if this story is true? I've always wondered.
Does the poster want Japense copyright law changed?
That's 161 dollars more than I got for any of my 12 patents.
It seems like the whole world is like this. AKA, screw the little guy.
I invented the Scroll Lock key. Maybe it's time I start looking for those royalties. And no, it doesn't matter that you don't use it!
- DDT
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
This reminds me of Kary Mullis who invented PCR. His company was sold for $700M on the basis of that invention, he got a $10K bonus.
Scientists should unionize - they typically so involved in their work that they end up getting the *shaft* monetarily, while MBA monkeys soak up all the profits.
OWNED
Nichia...owns the patent because Nakamura had signed a certificate handing the ownership of the patent to the company....[he] countered by saying that the certificate is invalid because he didn't know scientists working for a company could legally claim patents for their products when he signed the certificate...apan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors.
Sort of like the countless articles about boohoo musical acts that decide after taking the signing bonuses and all the perks that they don't like the RIAA, this is a case of "guy signs away everything and now wants an undo button".
Isn't that kinda redundent?
Here I am the first one to comment and I have nothing to say. Except maybe "that kinda sucks" and "blue LEDs are cool".
On the one hand, it is true that patent law is becoming increasingly skewed against individual inventors. But on the other hand, if your job at a company is to come up with new ideas and methods of doing [whatever your particular field is], it wouldn't make much sense if you could come up with them, patent them, and then hold the company hostage, demanding they license your ideas. I mean that was what they were paying you for in the first place.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hey! I'm the ac who posted this question. Why am I modded off-topic. I'm genuinely curious about these caves Woz built for his son. Geez...
I doubt this guy was rich enough to start his own Blue LED research lab, which I am sure cost millions and millions of dollars.
If he wants to own his own patents, I'm sure there is no law in japan stopping him from quitting and starting his own lab with his own money.
This is just crazy to me. The guy is a RESEARCHER working for a COMPANY and people think that he should have a right to the PATENTS on things that he researched and invented ON THE JOB?
This is as bad as the MP3 whiners. Want free music? Make some, and give it away. Problem solved.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
There used to be a time when good advice was "don't bend over" in prison. Now I guess the same thing can be said about work.
Corporations are not going to pay for employees to sit around all day doing expensive scientific research if they don't get the patents. The guy may have only been paid ~$162 for his patent, but how much did he earn from his employer while he was busy developing the technology?
Now, if the guy was a janitor that happened to come up with a blue LED, then I might say he has a point....but, Nichia Corporation is in the business of LEDs!!!
I'm curious. If you invent something in Japan, can you patent it first in, say, America, or any other place that you may not happen to live? And would it help you if you did? By 'help' I mean perhaps have a chance at realizing some personal gains from your intellectual property.
Some ideas can be based upon new discovery of universal scientific truths. One would think that where the person who had an idea like this resided would be less important than in many other issues of law. Especially if there was a potential market in the location where the inventor patented it.
Patents are so complicated.
I mean, that sucks ass! And not good ass either, I'm talking about some of that old scragily cottage cheese ass!
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
I guess not even being a Nobel Prize [contender] gives you credit anymore.
Yea, I hear ya, bro. Remember the good ol' days when Nobel candidates could rape, pillage and steal, and were always above the law.
Well basically what it comes down to is:
Work sucks, corporations are evil, invent something on your own time...
or sit home a play video games all day.
Is it fair that corporations have the unrescricted rights on your brain while you are an employee?
I think not, but governments favor corporations instead of people, so what do i know.
On the bright side, 20,000 yen will buy a few Sapporos.
Yes, cheap sarcasim, I am trully crying inside at all these HORRIFIC patent laws... sad times indeed...
these things cost $3 apice and with his bonus for inventing them he could only buy 54 of them, jeez
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
With songwriters, you can say "you get 10% of the profits from the sale of this album," which is relatively straightforward to measure (and even then you have a lot of disputes). With industrial patents, it's a lot more nebulous. How do you determine how much money the company has made from your patent? For example, say they make something with a blue LED. What percentage of the value of that product does the blue LED account for?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
GARPLY
everythingeverything asks: "Recently the IT development company I work for has undergone many changes, mostly focused on
the streamlining of the development teams. Three people have recently been laid off, and massive pressure is being exerted on
myself and my colleagues to develop more efficiently and delivery bug-free code. This is great - very positive changes. However
it's blatantly obvious to many of my workmates that the sales and accounts team are not meeting their end of the bargain. They consistently
oversell our services, write incomplete and inaccurate project specifications, set deadlines and budgets without consulting a TA or a developer, and
frequently give in to clients when they want to change the spec halfway through. Management have agreed that there are problems and we have
given them detailed research and documented solutions, but nothing happens. How have other employees in similar organisations brought about
an effective, non-hostile and mutually beneficial resolution to the problem?"
Suppose a songwriter writes the lyrics for a song used in a movie soundtrack. Computing his percentage is done all the time, even though it's objectively impossible to say what % that's worth. The creative unions have minimums, so that even if their members are crappy negotiaters, they can still reap some value from their work.
Screwed, blued, and tattoed? This seems to give it a new meaning!
The article states: ---------- Nakamura, however, countered by saying that the certificate is invalid because he didn't know scientists working for a company could legally claim patents for their products when he signed the certificate. ---------- So you signed something saying the invention isn't yours, and you claim that it isn't valid because you didn't check it out first?!? Didn't the fact they were asking you to turn it over to them ring any alarm bells? Well, anyway, he is not screwed yet. I suspect he will get at least some of his money from the suit mentioned in the last paragraph.
Aren't we supposed to be HAPPY that this evil person who tried to patent an invention he worked hard to develop got screwed over? If this was Amazon getting the shaft over one-click you'd all be jumping up and down. You can't have it both ways... RIAA, MPAA, Intel, Patents... you have to pick a side and stick to it.
hey cmon, why is this -1, its a valid question Geez you guys are jerks. I only wanted to know about the caves.
I read about the cave in a newspaper interview with Woz a few years ago. Seems the house he built in the early 90s had all sorts of fun features... waterfall, indoor/outdoor pool, game rooms, and even an artifical cave. But in Woz's words, the cave didn't turn out too well... it was expensive and "not fun, even for kids". In a cool throwback, it's in the garage of this house that Woz holds tech/web/computer classes for local school kids. I don't think his family lives in that house anymore, I think they live in Los Gatos now.
AFAIK, Woz has three kids of his own, none of which are autistic. Though he does have a few more by marrage, so maybe one of those childen is autistic. I dunno.
Personally, I'm thinking etched Woz face window on one side, and a construction of the inventor's face on the other using only the brightest of blue LEDs.
s200.org - visit it (me), love it (me).
Maybe some American people can clear something up for me. At the discount store, I can buy a thing that looks like a laser pointer, but it's a very bright blue LED. It has something to do with detecting counterfeit money.
Is there a new system in American money? It looks all the same to me.
I've got a similar story..
For the last several months I been paying some people to put some wood, metal, plastic tubing, wires, concrete, and bricks together in the form of a house and now these bastards are claiming rights to 'the' house. They claim the brawn, brains, and time they spent building the house gives them the right to collectively own it.
What do you think?
That basically is a message from the comapany to all its employees, "If you have something good and patentable, you better quit now."
So, all the smart employees left, and the company collapse. No one end up winning.
Better solution is that the company negotitate a licsening deal with the employee, both benefit. The rich usually share their profit to attract talent. Seldomly wealth is accumulated.
as long as your bonus is more this year, you hippie. You have everything going for you except legalized, regulated pot.
Why did it take so long to create a blue LED?
They're just being assholes. Fuck'em.
I read the exact story on this when Wired first published it, I believe it was called "True Boo-Roo" - a reference to the japanese use of the english language to discribe "true blue" since their word for Blue is the same as Green.
... and our chairman and president let me have the money I needed."
What I don't find amazing is the fact that the company took the right to the Blue Led. In the wired article they talked about how the company funded his research efforts for YEARS hoping that he would develop something. I don't know about you, but if I were to make such a risky investment I'd expect something for it - like what I invested in.
From the article itself, "Nakamura chose to work on gallium nitride not because he was confident of success, but "because I had had the bitter experience that if you do the same as everyone else, when it comes to making products, you can't sell them. So I chose a material that almost no one else was working on
Not only did he let him have the money, he paid his salary as an inventor for the company. This case is rediculous, on this one I'm for the corporation.
Ace
Monkey.
since their word for Blue is the same as Green.
In Japanese-
Akai - Red
Aoi - Blue
Just thought I'd point it out.
Bend Over... Here It Comes Again!
I highly encourage you to use this acronym at work.
Bonus points if you can use it while talking to your boss/manager about something he recently did to screw you over.
This is as bad as the MP3 whiners. Want free music? Make some, and give it away.
Not if some songwriter comes out of the woodwork and claims that "Your song is substantially similar to my song; therefore, I'll see you in court."
Will I retire or break 10K?
From reading the article:
:)
"Japan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors."
But its still his own fault for not knowing the law and signing stupid contracts. But then again I don't know every law or read everything detail of software license agreements either!
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
Sorry if I'm being to radical here. I just think that if you are going to be a good little capitalist you should at least play by the rules of capitalism. Unfortunately a lot of corporations these days practice a sort of soft communism where the administrators set the plan, divide the profits among themselves, and keep the prols in line with an alternating conga line of downsizing consultants and motivational speakers. No wonder they have to cook the books in order to look good to their shareholders.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
You can't patent something in the US if it has been patented elsewhere
Yes you can. According to 17 USC 102, he who files a foreign patent has twelve months to file a U.S. patent.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The people who never ever come up with a useful invention still get paid by the company. And the people who come up with lots also get paid. If they worked on commission, the first group of people would get nothing and the second group would become rich. But instead they all get paid for working, not for the results of their work (to a certain extent; if you're a really crappy employee you'll never get promoted and might get fired).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This guy invented something on company time and that's it.
I was reading elsewhere though, that the real tragedy is that Japanese companies do not reward their employs for the patents they do file. In the US, "real" companies will give employs 1-2K $ (or more) for patents, just because companies like to own patents. If it's a BIG patent, the inventor is more hansomely reward (often with stock and options).
Because of this, Japanese employees really don't have much incentive to work on hard patents for their companies. Their are probably exceptions -- Sony comes to mind as a company that almost surely has a more sensible patent reward system. But many "common" Japanses companies don't see things as Sony does, and overall this tends to hurt the Japanese economy.
So that's what's really going on here. This guy is trying to call attention to the fact that the common patent system in his country is broken and needs attention.
Shuji is now a professor at UCSB and is making wonderful advancements in materials engineering. Here's a quick link to whats he's up to recently.h tml.
http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/Announce/2awards.
Just a little more information on this great thinker.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
And regardless if the company bled red ink during his reign he would still have access to the company jet, etc.
Good to see this posted here. Dwayne's music totally kicks ass.
mogorific carpentry experiments
if movie actors like arnie get $30m per movie, then rightly so the person responsible for the 'brains' should get more than 0.001 % of profits
:) and all of society benefits..
Ironicly at least in communism, everyone even the manager get the same,
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
IE:Professional societies that closely resemble 'lodges' ... guys like the masons, glassblowers, or the starguild of Dune fame.
Not in the sense that we keep our knowledge secret, but in the sense that anyone who does 'the work' (whatever that might be) can join and speak and Move as one voice, IYGWIM.
Let's face it. The tech classes and the worker (fruit pickers, farmers, assemblers, etc) classes have much more in common than we see at first blush.
1) We provide a VITAL service to any capitalist economy, and could really fuck it up if we chose to.
2) What we do is mostly invisible. Everything Just Works(TM) when we're doing it right, and SINCE we're doing it right, we're unappreciated.
We really should form guilds and unions so as to exercise our collective clout in a manner that will be noticed by those freeloading bastards who play currency against currency, do differentials on options, etc.. No useful work whatsoever, yet they claim to control our lives.
Guess what?
They don't.
A global 'geek strike', work slowdown, or even better, (twirls moustache) a sudden 'stupidity strike' (oooh! looky! shiny server crashy! Code really bad!) would get these lusers' attention.
Only Guilds or something like them could accomplish this. You need members who all agree to do something in unison. We don't have that yet.
GeekPac is a teensy tiny baby step in the right direction, but it will fail.
Until we learn to act as one, and embrace a common ideal, we won't make a dent.
This ain't hard guys.
It might take secret handshakes (chuckle), actual face-to-face contact (OHMIGOD!) and shit like that to get it done, but it CAN be done!
Think about it.
Btw, we should try to bring the fruit guys and the farmers with us.
Let us leave No Man Behind!
(notajoke)
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
They certainly should've given him a nice bonus.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Ok.. it was the 70's and I was probably buzzed, but I was told by the IBM salesguy who had shown us that neat APL/Basic toteable box they were marketing at the time (51xx?) that anyone who chalked up a patent or significant invention/process improvement got a cut of the profits/savings/royalties that they had created, and due to Blue's pervasiveness, that those perks could add up to some rather princely sums for the contributor.
My take on IBM at the time is that they were exceedingly generous to their employees.
As they are NOW exceedingly generous to US, as the OSS community, it would seem that some of that elder ethos has hung on.
Input?
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
the only real way I see it working would be to specify a percentage of revenues for all patent outcomes that the scientist gets, and perhaps specify in the contract that for a period of X years, he could not license the patent to anyone else.
Comments?
since copyrights and patents are not the same theng.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I have but one thing to say to you, 'cause more would be a waste of my time, (you wouldn't understand it anyway) and it is thus:
Fuck You, Asshole.
There. I'm done.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Actually, photographers are the only group that is true for. If you pay somebody to create something, then it should be yours at the end.
Authors also keep their copyright to their work, of course they usually write first and license to the publishing companies/magazines.
Film companies get a copyright, but when you think about how much work goes into making a film, it makes sense. Music companies get the copyright to their artist's music, but that's just because they've been able to rape musicians for a lot of money.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The people who never ever come up with a useful invention still get paid by the company.
Or maybe they get fired. I certainly wouldn't keep someone on my payroll if they had never thought up anything even theoretically useful...
And the people who come up with lots also get paid. If they worked on commission, the first group of people would get nothing and the second group would become rich.
Are you honestly saying that intelligent people should subsidize stupid people? If people can't think up shit, they should go flip burgers or something that actually helps society.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
n/m
Riiigggghhhht...because before that company, Kary Mullis was an intellectual midget who never did anything. And he wouldn't have done anything without getting paid for it.
Lets pretend that scientists like him couldn't work in companies. Recognizing his sheer genius, people would buy him lab equipment if he promised to share his future wealth. Why would they do this even though he had no company? Because he's a freakin' genius.
Then he'd get rich.
And those who invested in him would get rich.
There wouldn't be any worry about HOW to sell it; he built the best mousetrap, and the world would have beaten a path to his door.
All without the benefit of that company.
Try thinking the other way: if Kary Mullis didn't exist, that company wouldn't have lasted very long.
Saying that those who take the risk cause inventions is like saying that those who jump off of buildings cause gravity. Necessity and passion are the mother and father of invention; business is merely an unfortunate side-effect- like the splat at the end of the jump.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
This argument goes both ways.
t ing->sales
Sure, without development, marketing, sales, etc an invention is just an invention, not a product.
But without invention and innovation, there is no new product (at least no profitable product).
The chain of product innovation science->invention->inovation->development->marke
is MULTIPLICATIVE, not ADDITIVE. If any of those terms is zero, the whole thing is zero.
A common misunderstanding is to give too much credit to the last steps (sales and marketing) because by the time the product gets in their hand, they take it for granted. Then, they can say: "see? before we got involved, this thing
was worthless. We turned it into something valuable, give us the big bonus".
That's why scientists and innovators get fscked
by marketing/sales. Scientist SHOULD unionize
and fight to retain ownership of their own fscking ideas.
The most common scenario is:
1 - you invent something
2 - your employer doesn't feel like turning it into a product and puts your invention on a shelf
3 - you get pissed off and tell them you quit
4 - they tell you that you can't work on anything
similar because THEY own the patent, and it's THEIR proprietary information, not yours. You can't use that information to build products outside the company.
5 - you say "it's my brain"
6 - they say: "in effect, we own a piece of your brain".
7 - you say: "well, if you won't develop and market this thing, at least let me put it out in opens source".
8 - they say: "oh no, why would we give away our valuable intellectual property".
9 - you quit in disgust, your invention never sees the light of days. You realize that 5 years
of your creative life went down the drain and
you are mad as hell.
Ask around you. Every creative techie has a story like this one to tell. The blue LED guy was lucky: at least his invention made it out the dooe, and he landed a nice academic post in the US.
- Anonycous Moward.
Where would we be technologically, if we had just used resources as the feasability of doing something, instead of money.
The guy wants to make LEDs, okay, so he'll make them. The robot-manufacturing plant-making guy delivers a couple of robots for that. And so on, and so on, and so on.
Well, I think I should point out that:
That said, even with his lossage, I think he had won. Before this fight, it was not widely known that person who did the invention did have copyright on one's work. It was assumed - just like the air - that company owns everything even without any specific agreement. Now everyone know that they do have a right and does not necessary have to give it away for free upon employment. Nakamura's major goal with this fight was to raise controversy on this copyright issue, and it is now accomplished.
Now, commenting on detail, I won't be surprised if he had signed the thing even without reading a single word on it - there was a time that people believed that company will do you a good if you blindly follow what they tell you to do. So his 20,000yen was probably not paid for the invention itself, but was more like a "bonus" in Japanese way.
In Japan, you get "bonus" twice a year. Everyone get it if anyone gets it. You don't get it for doing exceptional work or such, but company gives it to you to show that they care about you. But telling the truth, it's actually a part of your regular salary - you just get less monthly payment. You can tell because when you make a loan from a bank, it is always suggested to pay more back on month you get your bonus. Ever heard of a "bonus" that is expected to be given every year on same month? Well, this is the one and meaning of the word is really blurring here (though things are changing).
I bet this 20,000yen was given in similar way - not for his invention, but just as some kind of social custom. The company just had to give him the money. On the other hand, the only way for Nakamura to get acknowledgement was by receiving the money. At the time, both of them probably didn't even had in their mind that they were exchanging the invention and the money.
But anyway, he did sign the agreement, and the court judgment is made. I think court decision was fair enough from today's standard, but feel pretty sad because they never mentioned one important piece on this case - history. In Japan, signing an agreement was traditionally not considered that important or critical. It's not that people ignored it - but it's just they "believed" unwritten social contract would protect them more than signed paper would. This was especially true for a relation between employer and employee. Of course, this had never been a truth in the court (but it was so uncommon to use the court in old days), and this is why Nakamura is having a problem right now. I'm expecting more and more "Nakamura"s are following - rebellion against a company that one used to believe as an absolute (but nice) ruler.
I don't have any idea where they came from all of the sudden, but why aren't these at least as newsworthy as the blue LEDs? They have a shorter wavelength, so they should be more useful in applications which demand a higher frequency...
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
OTOH, they're not an efficient use of aluminum--the cans are damn thick.
Obligatory on-topic Nakamura statement: Nakamura's situation is a damn shame. He has done more for the human race than most medium-sized cities. Nichia's failure to reward him is shameful, and as an electrical engineer who designs blue emitters into products, I shall not forget it. Can you say design loss?
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
is an idiot. He's the best man around in this field, and if you don't serve him right, he'll look for somebody who does. Even evil empire as we called it does repect their developers ("Developer! Developer! Developer!").
A little bit straying away from the topic, but this explain why opensource is a huge success - the inovations come from the developers, inventors etc., not those who take the fruit of their labours and make money out of them.
Only a few years ago I heard an PHB said "Open Source?! Blah! It's so foolish of them to give their work away for free! Without our marketing and sales their work worth nothing!" (this PHB still works for big blue)
Scientific American did a profile on him and his unbelieveably brilliant work. He solved the problems everyone else was trying to solve with mountians of money with little more than table scrapps. His work was the fruit of his singular pursuit and almost inhuman determination. The support his company gave him, if you can call it that, was limited enough that most research universities could have made room for it, to say nothing of how easy it would have been for him to get a government grant with some of his results with an all but abandoned technique.
There's no question he company should own some of the patent. But his contribution was worth a hell of a lot more than $162 dollars US. If that's your reward for brilliance. Your blood sweat and tears forcing a brilliant concept down the throat of a company that doesn't fully appreciate it, finding somehow to not just keep the project alive, but to make it a world leader with a 6 month head start, in the semiconductor industry no less, and then have them keep the billions of dollars, cut you a check for a cool 162 bucks (before taxes), and a pat on the back, that's incentive to you, or anyone? I hope he gets all that's comming to him. His accomplishment is impressive. When viewed from the perspective of how little he did it with, it's simply astonishing. I'd hate to have as a research advisor, you're not going to get much sympathy if you say something can't be done.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Isn't this Japan we're talking about? Work for the good of the company, not for individual benefits.
Like "flied lice"
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I'd spend all my remaining money paying killers to shoot in the head the former boss and all his lawyers.
Yes, sound trollish, but name ONE legal way to win in court against a corporation when everybody knows that winning is just a matter of money.
1. Blue LEDS have not taken off in any technology I know of, and that doesn't show any signs of changing (new dvd crap still using red light instead of blue and compensating with new software).
2. 20K yen is crap. I couldn't buy a decent bag of pot for 20K yen.
3. He worked for years at the company. Who knows how many K he made per year and how many years he worked at the company. Who's to say he wasn't playing x-tank the whole time while Kimtimmy and Shi Lui sweated their ass off carrying the lycigen corteal plytorachthiam solution to the various curing stations.
I agree, the whole world is severely slanted towards those who peddle (sell, rep, own, things like money, etc) and the business types. The scientist/inventor/developer currentlly gets really worked over, it's not like the blue led made some money, it made a lot of money, share it!!. Things may improve when nanotech evens the playing field (everything freely replicated from downloads on the internet..) and the world systems change so that people with ideas can be as sucessfull as thoes who have lots on money..of coures, with nano, probabbly won't need money or those stupid pollitical games, ladder climbing etc..
...Nichia should endow a chair at a major research institute and arrange to have Nakamura granted tenure.
Nakamura's profession is scientific research. If relations have soured between Nichia and Nakamura to the extent that direct cooperation between them is no longer possible, then at the very least Nichia should arrange a setting where Nakamura can continue his research elsewhere.
Lots of companies endow chairs at major universities, and there are significant tax benefits for doing so. Nakamura also has obviously wasted a large part of his career on this pointless lawsuit, and might welcome such an opportunity to return to his passion.
Even if Nakamura has no interest in such an offer, the PR value for Nichia would be inestimable... right now their PR position seems very, very bad to me.
Nichia, be a magnanimous victor.
He will only get the $960,000 (10,000,000 swedish crown, 118,490,495 Yen) prize.
His company may have screwed him but at least he'll get the prize money.
Plus, a Nobel Prize looks pretty good on your resume after you ditch your dead beat employer.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Surely Nichia could have paid him the equivalent of a couple of million US in return for being quiet and going away. Before his breakthrough Nichia was a small chemical manufacturer specializing in phosphor compounds, afterward they became the world leader in blue, violet, and UV LEDs and laser diodes.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Boycott blue LED's. Just use a blue plastic over a white one. Teach those bums a lesson!
If you wanna play the game, you godda play by their rules.
So I have the right to comment on this. And I have to say that some of Rand's ideas were interesting, and I doubt that I had seen them expressed like that before. So, fine, if you want to tell people what the ideas were, no problem, I don't mind. (never mind that some of her ideas were pretty well flawed and only work perfectly in some fantasy world of fiction, like, for instance, her book. but that is a discussion for another place and time...)
...good site) I'm on the libertarian left, so don't talk to me about wanting to eliminate human rights or oppress anybody.
But the book sucked. And this has nothing to do with me wanting to repress anybody's human rights or oppress anybody. In fact, on the political compass (www.politicalcompass.org
Why did the book suck? Admittedly, this is somewhat subjective, but here are a few of the main things that I can remember about it (It's been a while since I've read it.) The characters are pretty much cardboard. The protagonists (the steel guy, the railroad woman, john galt, and the railroad woman's love interest whose name I've forgotten) are all perfect in every way, noble, work tirelessly, have the best food, have the best sex, never get tired, and do unquestionably what is right all the time. Their enemies (the railroad woman's brother, his set of crony friends, and pretty much the entire government, including the board of science), are all unquestionably evil, always mooching off the successes of the protagonists and trying to prevent their progress and hinder them so that their own, weak, businesses can survive. These characters are defined in black and white, where the white is more brilliant than a million suns and the black is darker than the deepest night. And this is one of the problems that I have with her philosophy, that we should let businesses do whatever they want because the businesses will always do what is good, make competitive advances only through their own sweat, science, and determination. But this will only happen in her world of fiction, and as we have seen in real life, businesses do not always do things that are ethical, legal, or right.
Moving on. The book is fucking long. Really long. Tediously long. The impossibly perfect and good characters always seem to be making page after page of passionate speeches about their wonderfulness and determination and how they are trying to succeed in the face of the opposition placed in their tracks by the impossibly evil enemies. And it's in these speeches that Rand is pretty much expounding upon her philosophy and why it's good, etc., but the fact that these speeches are so long and obnoxious just makes the book painful to read, especially if you can already tell that there are problems with the philosophy. She makes her points, and then keeps hitting the reader over the head with them again and again. The book is however many hundreds of pages long and she could have cut half of it out. Succinctness can be more effective than long-windedness.
Also, the plot is really not that exciting. It's an interesting concept, certainly, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired, a lot like MS Word.
So that, my esteemed 5-digit-uid-having slashdot poster, is why I don't like the book, and why I would tell other people not to read it. This is not to say that there is nothing good about it. Let me tell you, and everybody else here, what I think is a good message from it, so that they don't have to waste their time reading it.
Try to do the best at what you do, and hopefully you will succeed. Don't expect anybody to do you any favors or give you any handouts.
If there's anything besides that, let me know.
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
According to the Britannica:
Marxian economic concept that professed to explain the instability of the capitalist system. Adhering to David Ricardo's labour theory of value, Karl Marx held that human labour was the source of economic value. The capitalist pays his workers less than the value their labour has added to the goods, usually only enough to maintain the worker at a subsistence level. Of the total worth of the worker's labour, however, this compensation, in Marxian theory, accounts for only a mere portion, equivalent to the worker's means of subsistence. The remainder is "surplus labour," and the value it produces is "surplus value." To make a profit, Marx argued, the capitalist appropriates this surplus value, thereby exploiting the labourer.
So the problem is that they people are not paid according to the the income that their work generates for their employee.
In the case of somebody who invents something that lets his company make lots of money, his salary should reflect this. The employer wants exclusive rigths on their employees inventions, Ok, pay them according to the profit that those inventions bring to the company.
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
SURPLUS VALUE:
Marxian economic concept that rofessed to explain the instability of the capitalist system. Adhering to David Ricardo's labour theory of value, Karl Marx held that human labour was the source of economic value. The capitalist pays his workers less than the value their labour has added to the goods, usually only enough to maintain the worker at a subsistence level. Of the total worth of the worker's labour, however, this compensation, in Marxian theory, accounts for only a mere portion, equivalent to the worker's means of subsistence. The remainder is "surplus labour," and the value it produces is "surplus value." To make a profit, Marx argued, the capitalist appropriates this surplus value, thereby exploiting the labourer.
Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
So employers should pay a salary/bonus that reflects the real gain that the employees work produced.
Do they want exclusive rights on my work? Ok, as long as my salary/bonus reflects the millions of dollars that I made them earn.
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
This cracks me up. The same people who ask "why would you Free Software guys just give away your work?" are the people who put patent-assignment clauses in our employment contracts requiring us to essentially do the same thing.
Our work isn't for "free" per se (just comparatively cheap), but then, you can also charge money for "free" software too.
In that particular case, I d say it s maybe fair hat the benefit stays in the company. The work his has done was very trial-and-error and crazy-cook stuff. It is epitaxy, meaning the kind of chemistry between gases, or even plasma, and extremely hot sufaces of another material than the one that must be deposited (heteroepitaxy). There is not much help in thermodynamics, cristal theory, quantum mechanics or whatever in that case, thus the work is scanning different experimental conditions more or less at random ( or with the "Taguchi method"if w\one really want to pretend semething). It voodoo, and since there is no discovery but rather plain insistance and luck, and all that was invested in by the company...well...it not so unfair.
But wait... even cooks can keep the property of their findings !
Change my mind, it s unfair.
not useful. Unlike a mousetrap.
Plus, you're wrong. The internet was about a new economic system. An economic system is not an invention. Being brilliant in that is being a brillaint businessman. I can't think of any internet businesses that are successful because of an amazing product that they sell. They're doing well because of their business model.
Conversely, I can't think of any internet business that went under in spite of their amazing products; they went under because of their stupid business model.
The only two technological innovations I can think of (and these pale in comparison to Kary Mullis' idea) are Yahoo's idea of HAVING a search engine, and Google's idea of having a heuristic-based categorization of searches. And these two ideas have prospered...
Perhaps you could come up with a counter example. Let me ask you this for whatever example you hold: could the product that failed have a profound, obvious and life-changing effect on at least 1,000 people? 'Cause if not, it'll succeed based upon its marketing, not its usefulness. The example would just not be a good enough mousetrap.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Actually, the court decision is that the company owns the patent(s) but the inventor deserves a bonus. The courts have NOT decided yet the exact amount of the bonus. They are supposed to come up with their judgement in the following weeks.
n n20020920a2.htm
The 10,000 Yen is just what the inventor receives for filling a patent.
A more accurate version of this story can be found here: http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?
..of this that I can think of was the guy who invented the Frappucino for Starbucks. He was a regular employee at one of their stores, and all employees sign a release at Starbucks automatically giving the company all rights to newly invented drinks.
Starbucks bought this poor guy a Rolex. That's it. I mean, sure, a Rolex is nice, but how many millions upon millions must Starbucks have made off of Frappucino's by now?
Sig.i>
Ok, so let's see what value various employees add:
A semiliterate ape stands there on an assembly line invented by people far more intelligent than he, making a hand motion that, were he to do it out in the field, would leave him starved to death in a month.
For this hand motion, he gets: a house, a car or two, a lawnmower, a nice TV, clothing, and enough food to get so fat he has heart disease.
Ok, now all you marxists please tell me why the business men owe him still more money!??!?
The problem with Marxism is that it devalues into triviality (often with suggested or blatent claims of sinister association) the efforts of business organization.
Simply witness results of the absolutely immoral marxist "experiments" on unwilling populations. Were a psychologist to propose such experimentations on unwilling peoples, they'd be kicked out in no time.
As I read through the comments, I am struck with one thought: Every year we get closer and closer to the society described in Neromancer and other cyberpunk works.
...and I think this refutes the previous story's post about the lack of utility in having a lawyer examine your employment contract.
What union do the MBA monkeys belong too? Oh, I see.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
According to Businessweek, average executive compensation is 531 times higher than average hourly employee compensation. Cost-wise, that's 1 FTE for a manageer {sic} and 530 FTEs to entropy. That's really got to cut into the bottom line.
I bet even after hiring staff to cook lunch or reduce the general workload, there's plenty of that 530 FTE left over.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to Greenblatt.
As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it true", asked the
student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as Lisp?" Almost before
the student had finished his question, Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit
the student with a stick.
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