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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.
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 $10K bonus.
Scientists should unionize - they typically so involved in their work that they end up getting the *shaft* monetarily, while MBA monkeys soak up all the profits.
On the one hand, it is true that patent law is becoming increasingly skewed against individual inventors. But on the other hand, if your job at a company is to come up with new ideas and methods of doing [whatever your particular field is], it wouldn't make much sense if you could come up with them, patent them, and then hold the company hostage, demanding they license your ideas. I mean that was what they were paying you for in the first place.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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
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!!!
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 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
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."
midori - green
but as i understand it Aoi is blue/green
aoi umi - blue sea
aoi shibafu - green grass
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!
...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.
Agree. Don't. Watch revenge of the nerds III instead. Same idea, same result, much more entertaining. And better written. Not to mention without the air of pompous superiority.