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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.
You should read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". It's about the USA's intellectual elite going on strike because they are tired of being abused by fat-cat carpetbagger politicians and the imbecilic masses.
Actually, the book is snobbish, very poorly written, and far too long, but the concept is interesting.
cpeterso
Lots of professionals are able to hold on to a piece of their work, even if they did it under contract/salary. Think Hollywood, songwriters, photographers, some journalists, etc.
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. If it's worth more then what was paid, then that should have been taken into account during negotiations. (A royalties split would be a good way to do it)
Photographers shouldn't get to keep rights over work you pay them to do.
I guess you don't use FreeBSD in console mode?
Hit scroll lock and you can arrow key up and down on the console
At one time you could write Woz and ask him yourself, but he's a bit swamped at the moment. You might want to read his answers to other letters to see if the answer is there.
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
I never thought to look up the word until you posted that...
From Jeffrey's Japanese{-}English Dictionary Server:
mainichi
(n-adv,n-t) every day; (P)
(BTW, this site is a good place to go if you want to see the kana for an English word.)
MDN is one of the two Japanese news sites I go to, along with Japan Today. MDN is more into WaiWai and shocking news, while JapanToday covers a wider range of news topics, and has comment sections for just about everything they post, from quotes to pictures to news of the day.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Launch your favourite spreadsheet program. Push the down arrow a few times. See what happens? Now turn on scroll lock and try that down arrow again. See how it's different? ;-)
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
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."
I'm finishing up my PhD in Gallium Nitride research, and have been a part of the GaN effort at a U.S. university for ~ 6 years. The story is not as simple as it appears.
Nakamura indeed got extensive support from the company. The company and Nakamura BOTH bet on this family of semiconductor materials, with Nakamura leading the way and the company providing him the money and the freedom to take the risky path. Before Nakamura's breakthrough inventions, Nichia sold phosphors for use in CRTs, stuff NOWHERE near semiconductor materials.
Nakmura invented practically all the necessary materials science research and laboratory equipment to make blue LEDs feasible. At research conferences such as MRS (http://www.mrs.org) his results completely cleaned out the field. Lightyears ahead of the rest of the research community combined. He often did not understand the physics of the stuff to as much accuracy as others later figured out, but he made GaN WORK. He is an awesome inventor. Never took a vacation for more than a DECADE!
Nichia owns more than a hundred patents because of the research he led and contributed to enormously. To be compensated a few thousand bucks for those patents (I believe it is $182 PER PATENT), is a frickin' JOKE. How bad will Nichia look if Nakamura gets a Nobel Prize and Nichia does not compensate him better?
The commercial potential of GaN is ENORMOUS. In addition to blue LEDs, you have a huge improvement in optical storage (see http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/bd/ ).
So, in a fair world, Nakamura would have been compensated much better than he has been. The rest of the researchers on his team should've been, too.
F.
I've run into two situations:
1) The company/boss is rational. They will work with you to find terms that are acceptable to you, but they want their lawyer to approve it. (which results in the same as 2)
2) The company/Boss is a lawyer, and they have this mindset that every contract should be completely and totally in the favor of their client, and any concessions left to others are possible lawsuits for not looking after their clients interests. I've had the case where a lawyer who was also CEO of the company wanted to change the agreements mid-stream and sat there and plainly told me that what I was quoting from her words didnt' say what it clearly said. Needless to say, a company with such low morals isn't worth my time. But instead of leaving, we just refused to sign. "Our current agreement gives you enough rights". (I will not concede rights to anything developed not-for-the-company.) They didn't fire us as they were implying they would, though some of the employees did sign, those of us who didn't kept our jobs. Later, though, I removed my services from the company-- why spend time with unethical people?
I think proposing a percentage is a good idea. One of the things I usually do, because the lawyers are so intractible on this issue, is that when they ask for you to list all previous inventions, and all inventions outside the scope of the agreement, I make that list so broad that it covers everything I might possibly do for the company. Apparently the lawyers don't read that list or understand it, cause I've never had one balk at it-- they seem more concerned about getting their agreement and boilerplate signed as written than exploring the fact that its allowance for inventions outside the scope of the agreement is a big gaping hole that you can drive anything thru.
Lawyers ARE the problem, and everyone should refuse to sign draconian agreements.
But don't overlook the possibility that the agreement has a clause that allows it to be modified in such a way that it is acceptable to you.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
...and I think this refutes the previous story's post about the lack of utility in having a lawyer examine your employment contract.