On 29 Sep 2008 00:20:42 GMT, the infamous (Curt Welch)
scrawled the following:

--big snips throughout--

So, what petty idea was stolen from you to get you so vitriolic?

I've invented 100's of things in my life. It's what most good engineers do
just as part of their job. Nothing has been stolen from me.

Ah, that says a lot. You have a totally different mindset than he did.
My grandfather was more like you, in that he gave his idea for a
specialized ophthalmoscope to the AOA and didn't want anything for it.


There are engineering ideas that are once in a life time types of
inventions that deserve special attention and wealth to the creator. And
maybe, there is something about this guy's solution that deserves such
attention. I just don't see it yet. I will no doubt see the move when it
comes out (I see most the big movies) so I'll find out if if there is
something I'm failing to understand when I see it.

I see that I tend to give more sway to the inventors than you do.
shrug I'll see the movie, too.


Just -try- to tell me that you've never used them, Curt.

I use them all the time. They are extremely useful. But it wasn't a big
invention that resulted from a stroke of genus. They come under the
classification of stuff I consider obvious. I'm not sure (it was a long
time ago and I was in grade school), but I'm fairly sure it's one of the
millions of things I thought up before I heard they existed. It's just
obvious engineering.

It wasn't at the time, and nobody had exploited their ideas into a
product. Why isn't that "extremely useful" product worth a patent to
you? Interesting.


If there is something behind this story which irritates me, it's the patent
system and intellectual property rights in general. I think it's good that
a company can invest big R&D dollars and feel safe in being able to recoup
their investment with the help of intellectual property laws preventing
other combines from copying there ideas and profiting from the research
they didn't pay for. But what irritates me, are the squatters who take
advantage of the system by simply patenting every obvious idea they can
dream up, 5 years before the obvious idea becomes practical in the market
place. So when the market develops to the point that it's time to do the
weeks worth of engineering to put that interment feature on the wipers, you
find some idiot filled a patent for the obvious idea 5 years ago and now he
thinks you should pay in 10 million dollars for this "invention". In fact,
he didn't invent anything and invested almost nothing in his R&D effort. He
was just an intellectual property speculator.

Yeah, the patent world is absolutely nuts right now. Whatta crock!


I have to wonder if the true story about this math teacher who "invented"
the "interment wiper" was just someone who thought he had invented

"Interment"?!? It wipes the dead bodies or something? vbg


something big, when in fact he hadn't done anything substantial at all, and
was ignored by the auto industry because of the fact they didn't think he
had done anything worthy of reward. But then, using intellectual property
law, he forced their hand and made them pay out just to keep from looking
like the big bad auto industry had "stolen" this guy's "great idea".

But maybe I'm wrong, and maybe his solution wasn't obvious and was a great
idea. I'm looking forward to finding out more when the movie comes out.

Ditto.

Ciao!

--
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw