Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
spaco wrote:

Has anyone read that patent? I haven't. But many patents are issued
for their unique method of implementation, not necessarily the overall
idea. ----In other words, the feature that got the patent could have
been a non-obvious or super cheap(at the time) timer and switch
mechanism rather than the "idea" of intermittent wipers.
Guess I'll have to see the movie, too.

The patents are listed in the Wikipedia article on the inventor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

Use http://www.pat2pdf.org to obtain the patents.

Joe Gwinn

Well, I was not going to spend time actually doing the research to see what
the movie was about, but since you made it so damn easy, I had to look.

With a quick look, I see he was using transistors with an R/C circuit to
create the timer. Oh, yeah, no one would have thought of that.

In patent 3,351,836 (the first one listed in the Wikipedia article) figure
5 even has an error in it as far as I can see. The I and C contacts are
switched for the L/C timing circuit which drives the transistors and
creates the timing circuit. But that was just one of multiple examples and
the other examples seemed correct. (and maybe I'm wrong - I did only spend
2 minutes looking at it).

None of that is anything but obvious engineering work and as far as I can
tell, the entire patent dispute was a famous case debating exactly that -
i.e., where should the line be drawn between "obvious engineering" and
"original idea"?

It is clear from looking at the patent that he spent time doing the
engineering work and turning the idea into a workable design. But still,
it's just obvious engineering work and not anything like a "stroke of
genius" in my book. NO way in hell he deserved multiple billions of dollars
for what was probably only a few years of engineering work. He deserved to
be paid a salary for a few years of work if, and only if, he could find
someone willing to buy his work - which it seems he couldn't, in which case
he should have lost his entire investment for doing engineering work that
no on wanted at the time.

This is exactly the type of case in my book that shows we should shut the
patent system down.

Still, I bet it will be an interesting movie....

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/