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Blue LED Inventor Nakamura Awarded $8.1 Million
redkingca writes "The New York Times (reg required) has an article about an $8.1 million settlement in the blue-LED royalty case. Mr. Nakamura created the blue LED while working for the Nichia Corporation but never received any bonuses or royalties for his invention. A lower court had awarded 20 billion yen, nearly $200 million, and ordered Nichia to pay Mr. Nakamura last year. The settlement came after the company appealed that ruling."
Here's an interesting article from ScienceWatch (no bloodsucking reg required) which goes into more detail on the history and application of this *very* cool technology.
It's nice to see "the little guy" get one over on the "anything you think, we own" mentality of the big corporations. Produce a product on company time, yeah that's work for hire, but this bullshit of "you made X 3 years after you left the company, but we still own it" has to stop.
About 10 years ago a friend took another stance and left an employer after they patented his (very profitable) invention and licensed it, but gave him no bonus for it (the product incidental to their core competency.) He started his own consulting company and keeps all his IP now.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A first post, on Slashdot, that is actually interesting/informative? Nah! It must be a trick...
Or is this a sign of the comming apocalypse?
For those who would like to read a similar article without having to give out information:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5 ?nn20050112a1.htm
and here:
http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=bluele dinventorse1105540939&area=news
Pretty nice chunk of change for this guy. Although the company made quite a cunk themselves off of his work.
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
It's nice to see "the little guy" get one over on the "anything you think, we own" mentality of the big corporations. Produce a product on company time, yeah that's work for hire, but this bullshit of "you made X 3 years after you left the company, but we still own it" has to stop.
He was working for the company, on company time, at the companys direction (after he asked the company president to be assigned to do work on blue lasers), using company equipment. The guy who invented the Flourescent lightbulb for GE didn't get as much as the company initially offered this guy.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
...Nakamura held a press conference (Yahoo Japan link) after the settlement was reached, where he said he considered the result to be a "total loss", described the Japanese legal system as "rotten", and urged researchers in technical fields to move to the US (he currently works at the University of California).
Meanwhile, the CEO of Nichia held a separate press conference where he announced that real researchers do it for the joy of technical achievement, and not for mere monetary compensation. What an asshole...
Morale could be helped a lot by sharing the wealth and kudos. It does not help if a company earns 50 million off of an employee's idea, but only gives him/her a T-shirt. What message does that send to employees? At least give the inventor a nice fat bunus. Some people and companies are just so fucking greedy that it blows the mind. Their greed is beyond rationality. If you want yet another 50-million invention to come along, then share the wealth a bit to prime the pump for the next idea. Otherwise you are just biting the hand that feeds your greed.
Table-ized A.I.
As usual, the New York Times errs in claiming that US industry is markedly better than Japanese industry. US industry has a bad habit of treating outstanding contributors rather poorely. Look at what they did to Kary Mullis creator of the most valuable patent of the 20th century. Japan has had some problems here-but at least their businesses try seriously to provide for all their employees--and Japanese upper managers rarely get the extremely high salaries common in the US. In the US, even extremely productive contributors can easily find themselves homeless in their old age-and US management is so dominated by MBA's and lawyers that management has real trouble figuring out who the real contributors are in highly technical businesses. I think this case is important because it shows Japan is moving in a positive direction-basically containing their executive compensation and providing some additional options for their star engineers to gain early retirement/recognition.
Please note that under Japanese law, there is a provision for employees to be compensated for exceptional performance (which I would hope few people would deny was true of Nakamura's discovery).
So his lawsuit was based on a legal requirement for the company to pay him fairly.
this is not the first lawsuit of this kind. inventor of aspartane (artificial sweetner) sued ajinomoto (company known for MSG) and won ~$1.5 million before.
basically, the feeling is that providing reasonable compensation for inventors, regardless of where technically the invention patent or methods belong to, is good for the morale of workers, provides incentives and thus advances the society as a whole and increases competitiveness of corporations. finally, providing reasonable compensation is also economically viable for the company.
he was awarded $8.1 million after his contribution to the invention was deemed to be 5%, instead of the 50% in the prior ruling. the original ruling resulted in ~$600 million settlement.
the company issued a statement saying it's glad that the invention of LED was attributed to more than just one person, as indicated by the reduction of Dr. Nakamura's contribution value by the court.
Ok, let's review:
o Most of us can't earn 1 million in a decade.
o This guy has enough money that, if left in a simple account earning 5% (compounding left to the accountants), he could live off the interest of $400,000 a year.
o That's a crap-load more than I make in a year.
o He worked hard, but no harder than I work, and in some instances, no more hours than I work.
o He got paid to do what he was doing.
Should he have gotten paid more? Oh, hell yeah. Should the company have appreciated him more? Well, duh. Now the genius has left and they're stuck with whatever they've got to work with. They screwed themselves while screwing him. But to call $8 million a drop in the bucket is beyond cynical.
While I'm not sure I agree with the decision of the court in terms of prior agreement of compensation, it certainly is just. The good guy won in the end, and he got the bonuses et al that he richly deserved.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
I could write a short list of products that I've created that have generated millions of dollars for companies that I've done work for, either as an employee or a contractor. But in doing the work, I was paid a guaranteed salary, and knew I would receive that whether the products were profitable or not.
There's more to making profit than just creating an invention. If the company didn't provide the supporting technology and capital to research and produce the product, then it wouldn't have been invented. Not to mention the whole marketing aspect. Sure you can be sitting on a million dollar idea, but without capital, marketing and a distribution model, it's worthless.
If he felt this product was going to be such a success and could have produced it without his company, he should have left, raised venture capital and produced it himself.
It's cases like this where I go back and rethink capitalism vs. communism vs. etc. Take Kary Mullis as another example (already mentioned in comments). His polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was patented by his employer, Cetus, who gave him a $10,000 bonus and then sold the IP for $300 million. His salary & bonus are a pittance for PCR.
Makes me wonder if this is the type of stuff Marxists think will bring about communism...and how long capitalism can survive when the creator of extremely meaningful creations gets 0.00333% of the profits.
:wq
The problem here is that he has set the precedent that your salary is if you do nothing; if you invent something cool, you sue the company to get MORE.
So are you honestly suggesting that the salaried employees that bring in millions of dollars with their inventions or solve particularly difficult problems should be paid the same as those who aren't profitable at all or stick to the routine? What about the executives who are paid millions based on the performance of the company? We compensate executives of big corporations based on how the company performs, and we vary their pay wildly, to the tune of several million dollars, depending on how they do. Why are people so willing to accept that hard work and results should only be grossly rewarded when performed by executives? People keep saying that the company provides the capital for the R and D and takes the risks to bring it to market. How did they get this capital? Osmosis? It was either through the investments of venture capitalists or through previous products developed by the same people we're talking about. And if it was from venture capitalists, the company is likely relatively new, and breakthrough inventions that earn a profit should be rewarded, as they're a big reason why the company will see another year. Does anyone here honestly think that executive ability is the only ability worthy of millions of dollars?
Please keep in mind I DO work for a large company who owns my inventions, I DO have patents in my name but assigned to my employer, and I WON'T sue my company even if they make millions from it and I don't see a dime... they compensated me for that time and effort - that's what my salary is.
They taught you that nonsense about salary and compensation so the executives could keep your cut. I read another post that said the CEO gave a press conference saying that real researchers do their jobs for the joy of technical achievement. Do executives do their jobs for the joy of fiscal discipline? Does it bother you that your time and effort, no matter how productive or brilliant, is worth shit unless you're an executive? And does it surprise you that the people paid the most are the ones who manage the money?
I thought that in capitalism, we reward those with harder jobs who perform well because otherwise "no one would do them." Why are we rewarding one type of hard work and not the other? Why is it that culturally, we reward people who run companies or appear on our newly invented hi-def TV screens screens, but we don't reward the people who make any of this technology possible? I'd like to thank you, though. I now know that if I end up in a corporate job, I should only surrender my mundane ideas to those greedy fucks.
To you my fellow youngings: stick to the university life. The university of Iowa just changed their patent and staff invention compensation plan because it was percieved as being unfair among the professors. They changed it so that the inventor recieves all of the first $100,000 of profit (or something like that). Here's how horrible it was (they also mention that change):
Adding to the benefits for researchers is the chance for profit. The university splits licensing revenue four ways - 25 percent to inventors, 25 percent to their departments, 25 percent to a fund advancing university research, and 25 percent to UI Research Foundation - but a new plan the UI Staff Council passed on Thursday would allocate them an additional $100,000.
That's worth the extra school.
My dad worked for decades for one of the largest corporations in the world, as an engineer and developed many things which were patented by the company. He got to hang the patent on the office wall, but got little if any compensation for it..
It's still that way in most American corporations from what I can see. At my job, the management is constantly talking about how we need to put out more patents, and how important intellectual property is. To give us incentive, we get a whopping $100 for filing a patent, and an enormous $1000 if the patent is accepted.
Yeah, I guess it's better than nothing, but that's really not much incentive to work extra-hard, considering the extra time and effort needed to develop and write up the patent. If your patent is some obscure thing that no one cares about, the $1000 might be worth it to you. But if your idea makes the company hundreds of millions in profit, $1k is a really cheap reward.
As a result, I never think about patenting anything I think of, or really bother trying to come up with anything that groundbreaking. If anything I'm working on is patentable (possible, but not likely), I'm not going expend the extra effort needed to see if it's patentable. If I get any truly great ideas, I'm just going to sit on them and wait until I'm working freelance before I do anything with them.
It's funny how American companies give a lot of lip service these days to "innovation", but they're not willing to properly reward any of their employees for actually coming up with these innovations. A smarter society could easily outcompete us economically if they figured out how to reward people better for their efforts.