Portable Stereo Creator Gets His Due

eadint wrote to mention an International Tribune article covering Sony's settlement with the inventor of the portable stereo. From the article: "Pavel invented the device known today as the Walkman. But it took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corporation and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it: Andreas Pavel invented the portable personal stereo player."

Comments

Sad story

[c_fel]

In fact it's a sad story, it shows how it could be difficult to actually earn money from our inventions. It's not really motivating for me and many of us since we all are kind of inventors... Personally I don't think I'd have threw away millions of dollars in court like he did. Kudos to him !

Re:Sad story

[Mattygfunk1]

Imagine the number of every day products which have "true" inventors without a cent to their name.

The warm and fuzzy feeling of having created an idea that benefited millions probably doesn't have the same effect knowing that you were robbed of personal finacial benefits.

__
I watch funny adult videos.

Re:Sad story

[Grym]

Exactly, this story completely undermines the entire argument that the patent system somehow benefits small inventors--it doesn't.

SURE, this guy won in the end... AFTER 25 YEARS. How many countless other inventors have simply given up? Would this guy have been able to also patent new ideas or defend other contested patents during this time period?

What's the point in intellectual property if you're realistically only allowed to keep what companies don't want?

-Grym

Out with the old, in with the new

[Kawahee]

I, Todd Aspeotis invented the iPod! iShall send forth my iLawyers to iSue you for my iPatent. iWish iHad some iFriends so they could see my name iN the iMedia, but iDon't.

Re:Slight correction

[creepynut]

In a way, Nintendo helped. Sony and Nintendo were working a joint effort to make a CD-based version of the Super NES. Nintendo screwed them over, and Sony went off and made the Playstation.

Re:Slight correction

[malkavian]

What an odd thing to say. The Walkman is a personal portable stereo player. Sony invented nothing there, they merely created a personal stereo, and branded it as a "Walkman".
The playstation wasn't invented under the same argument, as it was a subset of a 'game console'.. Not sure who came up with that idea (atari was the first I remember).

Not sure I understand

[David Off]

I'm not sure I understand the invention here (unless we are defining "invention" in the terms used by the USPO). When I was at school back in the early 1970s there were girls who would walk around with headphones and casette recorders to listen to music using the Philips Compact Audio casette system. which was introduced in 1963. I don't know if you remember these casette players, they would work on batteries and had a strap so they could be carries over the shoulder like a handbag. The walkman just seems like the usual Japanese refinement and minituarization of the system... I don't see an inventive process here except for certain component technologies such as the compact audio cassette. There were also portable music systems based on the 45RPM record available from the early 1970s.

Just because this was novel in Hicktown Italy in 1977 doesn't mean it was novel in some of the slightly more go ahead parts of the world. He has basically beaten Sony into submission by harrassment despite losing all of his court cases. Ok maybe we shouldn't shed a tear for Sony who would do much the same themselves.

What did he invent?

[TorKlingberg]

Did the Walkman actually use any of his technical solutions? Or did he just "invent" the idea of portable music? The difficult part of protable music is not to think it would be nice, but to overcome the difficulties like making it small, light and robust enough.

The hypocrisy of Slashdot

[msormune]

So why is this not an obvious invention? Because it is a single guy against a big company, suddenly it's ok to patent something pretty obvious and try to start cashing in on it? This of course means that the manufacturers will increase the prices in order to cover the extra licensing costs. If someone working for Microsoft had patented this 25 years ago and now won the patent, most people on Slashdot would be huffing and puffing with their faces red. But when it's a single guy against the "new evil empire" Sony, let's all cheer for him. Never mind that it's the consumer that gets screwed in the end.

Re:The hypocrisy of Slashdot

[Tony Hoyle]

There have been *many* cases of patents retarding innovation.

My favourite is the steam engine - development was stalled for 20 years because of an outstanding patent on high pressure steam valves.

And that was when patents didn't have stupid lifetimes.... If it were like today I suspect we'd still be waiting for someone to invent it.

Ideas are almost entirely worthless...

[SpotBug]

I'll say it again: Ideas are almost entirely worthless.

Seriously. It's the implementation that counts. This is the problem most people have with the patent system, without even realizing that that's what their problem with it is.

Hey, here's any idea: personal transporters. You'd never have to waste time going anywhere!

Want something more realistic? Pretend it's 1990. How about a really, really good Internet search?

Patents should only be granted if the inventor has an implementation or, at the very least, a plan for an implementation with a time limit on when the implementation must happen.

It was already available

[NigelJohnstone]

He filed a patent in 1977 for fucks sake. Tape recorders already came in stereo, they already had headphones, they already were getting smaller, my dad had a phillips one with a battery pack and a carrying strap.

So what was his invention? What??

Similar in style to the tape recorder on this page:
http://www.superscopetechnologies.com/company/hist ory/superscopehistory.shtml

"In 1975, Superscope's product line included: eight portable tape recorders, six portable-cassette radio products, seven Hi Fi receivers, two tuners, three amplifiers, five stereo tape decks, six speaker models, five compact music systems, eight microphones "

The history of Grundig

[NigelJohnstone]

http://www.grundig.com/index.php?id=250

1965 The Cassette Recorder C 100 is the first cassette tape recorder made by Grundig. Recording takes place with the DC International System, on cassettes with the dimensions 120 x 77 x 12 mm.

1967 The CC Compact Cassette is introduced and can be listened to with the Cassette Tape Recorder C 200.

1974: The portable Radio Recorder C 6000 Automatic is a best-seller. Over 710,000 units are sold.

He filed for his patent in 1977.

Breast cancer diagnosis. AIDS drugs.

[aepervius]

And in general the medical world. Why the hell you think the third world is calling bloody murder on AIDS or drug patent ? Because most of those drug, *not EVEN found or developped by private laboratory* are sold at prohibitive price despite that the production of chemical itself isn't as expensive. This is why soime country (India /Brazil) many time over blatantly broke and violated patents. As for Breast cancer i can remmember sometimes ago a scientist whining because some labor patented a diagnostic process and made it too expensive or illegal to make some research on rbeast cancer (if I recall corrrectly). So granted those example are NOT consumer electronic, but they concern a far more bigger part of the world and a far more important thing : Health.

And do not get me started on US/EU company patenting a remedy used locally (india, Africa) since a long time, and then forbid local people to continue using it because of the patent. 10 years some of those patent held on fought by the country of the originating stuff (I think that was the case of Neme...Somebody call me wrong here). I won't even start speaking of mosento patenting grain and forbidding farmer reusing seed.