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Inventor of Optical Storage Gets Little Reward
Thu Anon Coward writes "This poor guy invented optical storage (CDs, DVDs) and never made a dime. Another case of an idea before its time and cheating a man of his due. To quote the article, 'Consumers will spend billions this holiday season on CDs, DVDs and machines to record and play the ubiquitous silver discs. But the inventor of the underlying technology won't make a cent. Today, Russell does consulting from a lab in the basement of his Bellevue home to keep in the game and supplement a modest pension from Battelle.'"
Unfortunatelly, a lot of genius guys are in the same case: the man who discovered aspartame (Schlatter), the man who invented Tetris (Pazhitnov, never patented it because at the time intellectual property rights were not established in then communist Russia for private individuals...). I do think that in this case, patents are usefull because they can be seen as a reward for the usefull and good job done.
What ? This is way offtopic .. how does this pertain to what happened to this guy. What happened to this guy was settled by the courts .. ie, Philips (not a chinese company) claimed to have invented all the ideas .. but then later on it was proven that they did in fact use some of this guys ideas.
Funny you mention the Wright brothers.
Patents most certainly DID work for them. They were some of the most litigious patent holders of the early part of this century.
Some idiot judge decided that they should be awarded a patent on the notion of powered flight, rather than a patent on their mechanism for lateral stability. The Wrights proceeded to use that ridiculously over-broad patent to run other American companies (read: inventors) out of the airplane business.
For many years, the only aircraft innovations were coming out of Europe. The Wrights were content to rest on their laurels (and their unstable and unreliable design), and attack anybody who tried to improve on the airplane as a patent infringer.
Fortunately, the Feds finally put a stop to that when they apprehended the military utility of powered flight, and saw how the state of the art was progressing overseas.
Ironically, one of the Wright's principal US competitors (Glenn Curtiss) a) built the Wrights' first motor, b) invented the layout of the airplane as we commonly know it today, and c) wound up owning the Wright aircraft company.
So, in this case, it was a happy ending. The better innovator (Curtiss) won out in the end, and the Wrights died bitter.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The company did patent it, Mr. Russell was an employee not some independent inventor working out of his garage:
"Battelle recognized Russell's creativity and gave him time and a laboratory to develop his ideas, including a far-out system that would use a laser to read digitized music. In hindsight, Battelle let Russell's patents go for a song. It licensed them to a venture capitalist who formed a public company in 1980 to market the technology. That company ran out of money in 1985, and the patents went to a startup in Toronto, which hired Russell. It sued Sony, Philips and music publishers for licensing fees and royalties on CD technology, but Russell was let go before settlements were reached, and he never got a share."
And heck a heck of a nice guy and interesting to talk to also. I met him a few years ago at a friend's holday party--he's their landlord and neighbor. We had a mini geek-fest in the corner comparing our ipaqs.
When I heard (from someone else in the room) that he invented the CD, I was just in awe. Very cool.
He's into many other things also. He may not be rich like he deserves to be, but I can say he's living comfortably (he owns at least 2 properties that I know of) and is happy.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
Don't forget the "You Got Mail!" guy from AOL - he settled for a very (relatively) small one-time fee. Can you imagine how rich this guy would be if he got paid with royalties?
:)
I think it's the same story as the guy who did the "Yahoooooo" yodel as well. I could be wrong - somebody correct me if I am, please.
This story perfectly illustrates one of the
differences in patent law between the good
old USA and Germany.
In the USA, the employee's invention & patent
is owned by the employer.
In Germany, the employee's invention & patent
is owned by the employee.
Most US corporations require that employees
sign away all their rights to any innovation,
regardless of whether it was developed on the
job (or even job-related) or not. Even without
relinquishing such rights, the employee has
little legal recourse in American courts. In
effect, the employer owns the employee.
Considering the direction that corporate pensions
and benefits are headed in the USA, which is:
none (now 401K), and shrinking (eg. medical), the
imbalance in favor of the corporation is getting
worse. When the increase in L-1 and H1-B visas,
and the RIFs in favor of offshore outsourcing are
taken into account, the future of innovation in
the USA looks bleak. Finally, the whole issue
of software patents and the ridiculous position
adopted by the USPTO, it is apparent that the
USA's corporations are trading in their long term
financial and industry growth for potential
short term profits.
Yes and no.
According to this article
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-888893.html
The yodeler Wylie Gustafson was paid a one time fee of $590 for one television commercial in 1996.
Yahoo then took that same yodel and used it again and again in ther advertaisments without paying Wylie.
Wylie sued Yahoo and received an undisclosed sum of money. Proberbly on the order of a million dollars (he sued for 5 million).
After that Yahoo had a Yodel contest to replace Wylie's yodel
http://promotions.yahoo.com/yodel/
They paid some little girl $10,000 and proberbly forced her to sign over the rights to the yodel as well (to avoid another lawsuit.)
Rethin
If he wanted more than he was guaranteed, then he should have negotiated a better contract. or started his own company.
I know, i know, that would not have been super easy and guaranteed him a steady paycheck. but if you want to make the big money, you have to take the big risks. Or take very small risks over an entire lifetime, like smart people do with the stock market. Or you can do what this guy did and just work for someone else. He may not be rich, but he isn't exactly living on the street.
Actually, the layout of the airplane as we commonly know it today came from the design of an airplane from Santos Dumont, that brazilian living in France that flew around the Eiffel tower one year after the Wright brothers did their first flight.
The patent was granted in 1959. I first remember being in a car with a 3-way belt in the early 1970s.