Posts Tagged: "thomas edison"

In my experience, the passion to invent is stirred by two things: dissatisfaction with an existing product or service (i.e., too large, too slow, too expensive, too difficult to use), or a dream and desire to create something entirely new, a product or service that will augment humanity’s capability to reach farther, move faster, aggregate and analyze all sorts of data, or bring together pieces and form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Over my career I have been a named inventor on 147 U.S. patents. Over my career I have developed a process for identifying consumer needs and creating unique, patentable solutions that are relevant in the marketplace. I call this the Eureka Method. The Eureka Method is a mental discipline that can be learned and practiced to help you produce a Eureka! moment.

Lemley’s response introduces the new term “sequential improvement.” This suggests to us that he has now abandoned many of his claims of “simultaneous invention.” The word ‘sequential’ does not occur a single time in his article. We agree with Lemley’s new description that invention and innovation are often sequential, building in a series of related but different inventions: it is a normal feature of development and does not require a 108 page and 260 footnote article to establish it. Nor does it have radical policy consequences for the patent system which is well-adapted to this feature of real invention. But Lemley’s recommended policy would deny patents to second comers who contribute the key missing ingredient that unlocks an entire field. To Lemley’s credit, he recognizes the benefits of patent races and that the patent system leads to more innovation. But if that is true, Lemley does not explain why the patent system that we actually have is broken. His proposal to deny patents on “the most important inventions” and not grant more patents seems to flow from unreliable scholarship rather than a precise, reliable diagnosis of a problem.

If you actually read my article you will find that I simply don’t say the things they claim I say. The basic refrain of the Howells-Katznelson paper is that (1) I think Edison and the Wright brothers didn’t make inventive contributions, and (2) I diminish their contributions in service of my “radical” anti-patent agenda. With all due respect, I don’t see how anyone who read the whole paper could think I said any such thing. There is no question that Edison and the Wrights made useful contributions to the world. The point of my article is that they (and the many other iconic inventors I discuss) did not act alone. They made important but incremental contributions on the shoulders of many other inventors advancing the technology, and they often did so at about the same time as other, lesser-known inventors.

For example, regarding Thomas Edison, Lemley’s primary case illustrating the so-called “myth of the sole inventor,” he alleges that “Sawyer and Man invented and patented the incandescent light bulb” (Lemley 2011, p26) and that “Edison did not invent the light bulb in any meaningful sense” (Lemley 2011, p25). We disprove Lemley’s assertions and present five key facts that Lemley omits: for example, although Lemley cites a Supreme Court case in 1895 as a source for the statement above, he neglects to inform us of the decision reported in that case; it affirmed a lower court’s 1889 decision in favor of Edison and finding the Sawyer & Man patent invalid. Furthermore, the Sawyer and Man lamps were not commercially viable, having only a few hours life, whereas Edison’s invention was the basis for a lamp with a hundred times longer useful lifetime: electric lighting became economic and it was Edison’s invention that unlocked the field after three decades of experimentation by others in incandescent lamps. There was no candidate for an invention simultaneous with Edison’s invention.

The canonical story of the lone genius inventor is largely a myth. Edison didn’t invent the light bulb; he found a bamboo fiber that worked better as a filament in the light bulb developed by Sawyer and Man, who in turn built on lighting work done by others. Bell filed for his telephone patent on the very same day as an independent inventor, Elisha Gray; the case ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which filled an entire volume of U.S. Reports resolving the question of whether Bell could have a patent despite the fact that he hadn’t actually gotten the invention to work at the time he filed. The Wright Brothers were the first to fly at Kitty Hawk, but their plane didn’t work very well, and was quickly surpassed by aircraft built by Glenn Curtis and others – planes that the Wrights delayed by over a decade with patent lawsuits.

Sarah Miller Caldicott is the great grandniece of the legend himself, Thomas Alva Edison. She’s a motivational speaker, head of business consulting firm PowerPatterns and the co-author of Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America’s Greatest Inventor. In this interview Caldicott reveals what she’s learned and gained from being related to an icon of innovation.

The reality is that the term patent troll seems to be more in the eye of the beholder than anything else. So a patent troll is whoever is suing you because you must be correct and some evil wrong-doer is holding you hostage. Never mind that you are actually infringing and you are the real wrong-doer (i.e., tortfeasor). What is needed is a working definition for the term patent troll so that this nonsense can stop once and for all, and so the uninformed in the media can be spared the embarrassment of their own cluelessness. So lets take a look at some of the characteristics that will get you characterized as a patent troll and either confirm it as a useful indicator of a wrong-doer or as simply overblown and wholly inaccurate.

By far, most inventions are improvements upon other known devices or solutions. In fact, whenever I teach patent law courses I tell students that in their career as a patent attorney they are unlikely to ever come across a pioneering invention (i.e., first of its kind, revolutionary invention). Even the great Thomas Edison, the most prolific inventor in US history, rarely came up with pioneering inventions. What Edison really had a knack for was taking something that someone else had come up with and making it extraordinarily better. So the first lesson here is that inventors can and most frequently are those who improve upon the work of others. The second lesson is that those inventors who focus on improvements can be quite successful indeed!

Last week a US Patent Application No. 20100010893 published detailing an invention relating to digital advertising, and more particularly to creating video overlay advertisements suitable for use with digital videos. The owner is Google and the patent application was originally filed on July 9, 2008. It seems that the Internet giant and purveyor of the extraordinarily popular YouTube video sharing website,…

An argument can be made that Benjamin Franklin may be the most famous American inventor, but without a doubt the most prolific and influential American inventor was Thomas Alva Edison. It is indeed difficult to imagine the modern world without scientific contributions and inventions of Edison. Nevertheless, Edison did have failures, including his failed support of DC power over AC…

This cartoon is humorous on many levels.  Perhaps first and foremost is the fact that children under the age of 13 have never known a world without the World Wide Web, and for all intents and purposes everyone under the age of 21 (maybe even older) has no recollection of life before the advent of the World Wide Web.  For…

By far, most inventions are improvements upon other known devices or solutions. Even Thomas Edison, the most prolific inventor in US history, rarely came up with pioneering inventions. What Edison had the knack for was taking something that someone else had come up with and making it extraordinarily better.