Re: MSFT patents "PageUp/PageDown" function

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Ronald J Riley \(RJR-com\)" <rjr () rjriley com>
Date: September 8, 2008 10:27:34 AM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re:   MSFT patents "PageUp/PageDown" function

Yes, I do have facts to back it up.  Review the Hall of Fame  
inductees.  A
study done by Paul Heckel about a decade ago demonstrated that about  
70% of
the inductees were inducted for inventions produced while they were  
either
independent or academic.  I have appended the summary of that study  
below my
sig file.

Bell Labs is long gone.  And today few companies do much serious long  
term
development.

I was at a presentation at the Smithsonian Lemelson-MIT center some  
years
ago where some clown who had been from Bell Labs did a presentation  
where he
claimed that the days of independent inventors were past.  He asserted  
that
all inventions were team efforts.

The problem is that he was making his presentation to a group of
commercially successful independent inventors and we all knew he was  
full of
it.

Independent inventors were pretty much the norm in the early days of our
country and after so many of the big companies became bloated dinosaurs
downsized and either ousted or drove all the long term planners out we  
are
once again doing the same.

The way corporate politics works is that while every invention is  
conceived
in one mind lots of people whose contributions may be minimal want in  
on the
glory.

Dr. Damadian has been an associate for many years, he catalyzed the  
creation
of the MRI industry and managed to withstand twenty years of sleazy  
tactics
by patent pirating large entities.  Wilson Greatbatch invented the  
pacemaker
and started a whole industry.  Gordon Gould did the same, and as I  
recall he
told me that AT&T and GM were the two parties who did their best to  
steal
his invention with thirty years of abusive litigation.

As I see it AT&T and the former Bells have been bad apples for decades  
and
today are jokes.  They have consistently failed to adopt new  
technologies
until late in the game.  I think that this was in large part driven by a
milk existing customers mentality.

And another funny is that in spite of big business attempts to turn the
patent system into a king's sport with patent deform, it is the  
independent
inventor community who keeps torpedoing those efforts.  We do so in  
honor of
Jerry Lemelson.

I have had the pleasure of knowing every inventor I mentioned.

Ronald J. Riley,


Speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.patentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased  
founder
Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040211231036/ipcreators.org/Inventor_Groups/Hal
l_of_Fame/nihfstat.htm

Intellectual Property Creators          (Put me on your mailing list)
Most Hall of Fame inductees were entrepreneurs

A preliminary analysis of the National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees
shows that most of the were entrepreneurs. The breakdown is as follows:

Entrepreneurial Inventors 55 53%

Independent Inventors who licensed 5 4%

Total Independent Inventors 60 57%

Academic Inventors 16 15%

Corporate Inventors 29 28%

Total 105 100%
The inventors were classified into four different categories.

Entrepreneurial inventors. These are independent inventors who were also
entrepreneurs who started their own companies to invent or commercialize
their invention. Many of these companies survive today.

Licensing Inventors. These are independent inventors who licensed their
inventions to others. They are similar to Entrepreneurial inventors in  
that
they took the fundamental financial and technical risks, but different  
in
that they did not create a company to market the inventions.

Corporate Inventors. These are inventors who were hired by  
corporations to
invent and their employer took the financial risk.

Academic Inventors. These are inventors who worked in academia either
universities or non-profit research labs.
The inventor inventors who are entrepreneurs are:

  1. Whitney 1765 Miller & Whitney
  2. Morse 1791 ?? licensed
  3. Goodyear 1800 Goodyear Tire and Rubber???
  4. Ericcson 1803 ?????
  5. Deere 1804 Deere and Company
  6. McCormick 1809 International Harvester???
  7. Otis 1811 Otis Elevator
  8. Westinghouse 1846 Westinghouse
  9. Edison 1847 General Electric
 10. Bell 1847 A T & T
 11. Burbank 1849 Independent
 12. Berliner 1851 Licensed founded Deutsch Grammaphone
 13. Eastman 1854 Eastman Kodak
 14. Burroughs 1857 Burroughs Corporation (Now part of Unisys)
 15. Sperry 1860 Sperry Rand (now part of Unisys)
 16. Hollerith 1860 IBM
 17. Ford 1863 Ford Motor Company
 18. Hall 1863 Aluminum Company of America
 19. Baekeland 1863 Bakelite Corp.
 20. Dow 1866 Dow Chemical
 21. Wright Bros 1867 Wright Aircraft, predecessor of CurtisWright
 22. deForest 1873 Independent
 23. Marconi 1874 American Marconi, predecessor of RCA
 24. Kettering 1876 Delco (Sold to GM)
 25. Carrier 1876 Carrier
 26. Cottrell 1877
 27. Goddard 1882 Licensed
 28. Sikorsky 1889 Sikorsky Aircraft
 29. Armstrong 1890 Licensed RCA (twice), FM Entrepreneur
 30. Houdry 1892 Oxy-Catalyst
 31. Julian 1899 Julian Laboratories
 32. Beckman 1900 Beckman Instruments
 33. Lear 1902 Learjet
 34. Edgerton 1903 Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier
 35. Alford 1904 Alford Manufacturing Company
 36. Farnsworth 1906 Farnsworth Television
 37. Carlson 1906 Xerox
 38. Parker 1906 Parker Instrument
 39. Land 1909 Polaroid
 40. Hewlett 1913 Hewlett Packard
 41. Parsons 1913 Parsons Corporation
 42. Moyroud,Hogonnet 1914 ???
 43. Greene 1918 Safe Flight Instrument Corp.
 44. Greatbatch 1919 Greatbatch Enterprises
 45. Wang 1920 Wang Labs
 46. Kilby 1923 TI
 47. Djerissi 1923 Alza
 48. Olson 1926 Digital Equipment
 49. Noyce 1927 Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel
 50. Damadian 1936 Fonar 50
 51. Shockley 1908 Shockley Semiconductor, forerunner of all US
semiconductor firms.
 52. Gould 1920
 53. Rines 1922 US Army Signal Corps Founded Franklin Pierce Law  
School.
 54. Bird 1921
 55. Stanley 1858 Stanley Electric Manufacturing

The Independent Inventors who licensed their inventions are:

  1. Otto 1832 ???
  2. Morganthaller 1854 ???
  3. Tesla 1856 licensed
  4. Diesel 1858 licensed
  5. Williams 1886
  6. Maiman 1927 Hughes (worked as a consultant to Hughes)

The academic inventors are:

  1. Pasteur 1822 Ecole Normale
  2. Carver 1864 Tuskegee
  3. Hazen Brown 1885 New York State Dept. of Health
  4. Moyer 1899 US Dept. of Agriculture
  5. Fermi 1901 ? University of Chicago (Szilard)
  6. Draper 1901 MIT
  7. Lawrence 1901 UC Berkeley
  8. Bennett 1903 various
  9. Alverez 1911 UC Berkeley
 10. Kolff 1911 Various medical schools
 11. Townes 1915 Columbia
 12. Forrester 1918 MIT
 13. Blumberg,Millman 1925 Various
 14. Ledley 1926 Various, founded DISCO.
 15. Burckhalter, Seiwald 1912
 16. Sheehan 1915

The Corporate inventors are:

  1. Burton 1865 Standard Oil
  2. Steinmetz 1865 GE
  3. Coolidge 1873 GE
  4. Alexanderson 1878 GE
  5. Langumuir 1881 GE (Edison)
  6. Zworkin 1889 RCA
  7. Volwiler,Tabern 1893 Abbott
  8. Carothers 1896 Dupont
  9. Black 1898 AT&T
 10. Stibitz 1904 Bell Labs
 11. Tishler 1906 Merck
 12. Hanford,Holmes 1908 Dupont
 13. Plunkett 1910 Dupont
 14. Plank, Rosinski 1915 Mobil Oil
 15. Hillier 1915 RCA
 16. Camras 1916 ITT Research
 17. Sarett 1917 Merck
 18. Rubin 1917 Wyeth
 19. Elion 1918 Burroughs Wellcome
 20. Hall 1919 GE
 21. Ginsberg 1920 Ampex
 22. Colton 1923 G. D. Searle
 23. Rohrer,Binnig 1933 IBM
 24. Conovor 1923 Pfizer
 25. Mourer, Keck, Schultz 1924 Corning
 26. Durant, Emmett, Ganellin 1934 SmithKline
 27. Kwolek 1923 Dupont
 28. Semon 1898 BF Goodrich



-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 7:24 PM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: MSFT patents "PageUp/PageDown" function



________________________________

From: Stagg_Newman () mckinsey com [mailto:Stagg_Newman () mckinsey com]
Sent: Thu 8/28/2008 12:02 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: MSFT patents "PageUp/PageDown" function



Does Mr. Riley have any fact base to support his assertion below?

"It is important to recognize that as large companies age they become
incapable of producing significant inventions.  Most significant  
inventions
come from independent and academic inventors"

I would observe that many of the most important inventions and patents  
in
modern telecommunications and even computing (e.g. the transistors,
fundamental patents on digital communications, fiber optics, ...) came  
from
Bell Labs.  During that period "Ma Bell" was already many decades old.

Fortunitously most of those patents were put in the public domain  
without
charge for use.

Stagg Newman
Former Bell Labs Engineer
Fomer Chief Technologist, FCC








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