{"id":872,"date":"2021-04-30T23:30:54","date_gmt":"2021-05-01T03:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=872"},"modified":"2021-05-10T14:43:11","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T18:43:11","slug":"the-lemelson-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=872","title":{"rendered":"The Lemelson Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

An old adage says there are always two sides to every story and this is certainly true about the life and controversial career of inventor Jerome Lemelson<\/a>.\u00a0 What makes his tale so different from other public, polarizing figures is that the arguments traded between his admirers and his detractors concerning his use of the US patent system reflect, in a microcosm, two dramatically different points-of-view about how inventions and intellectual property should be governed in society.<\/p>\n

When one thinks of the great inventors of American history, one might conjure up Thomas Edison or George Eastman or Samuel Westinghouse.\u00a0 Each of these men is famous for bringing to market, some device or machine that changed the way we live.\u00a0 For example, George Eastman, dissatisfied by his experiences getting a photographic portrait, invented photographic film and the first portable camera and revolutionized how we record history, be it the small, private kind we each enjoy or the collective, public kind that shapes the doings of the world. \u00a0However, it is rare to find a person for whom the name Jerome Lemelson is even known let alone a household name, on par with those listed above, despite the fact that Lemelson holds approximately 600 US patents, making him one of the most prolific patent holders in the world.<\/p>\n

That portion of the world that does know him divides into two very diverse camps.\u00a0 His admirers think him a visionary who made our modern life possible.\u00a0 His detractors think him a hoarder who gamed the US patent system and, perhaps, was a forerunner of the modern patent troll.<\/p>\n

The pro-Lemelson side is succinctly presented in the Smithsonian book Little Explorer - Jerome Lemelson: the Man Behind Industrial Robots<\/em>, by Lucia Raatma. (Note similar stories are told in the book Inventors You Should Know: Profiles for Kids<\/em>, by Sam Simon\u2013 both are available on scribd.com)<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

The book provides a brief biographical sketch noting that Lemelson, born July 18, 1923 in Staten island New York, earned an engineering degree from New York University despite having his studies interrupted by service in World War II.\u00a0 After graduating, Lemelson started in a typical salaried engineering job before striking out on his own as an inventor.\u00a0 The book claims Lemelson\u2019s most successful invention as the universal robot that would use one of his earlier patents on machine vision, which Lemelson imagined as a computer analyzing images from a video camera, to study a task and then \u201cfigure out the best way to complete it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Raatma also spends some time talking about Lemelson\u2019s approach to business.\u00a0 She says of his licensing and patent prosecution efforts that \u201can important part of being an inventor is licensing one\u2019s ideas.\u00a0 People can\u2019t buy new items if they don\u2019t know they exist.\u201d\u00a0 To that end he founded the Licensing Management Corporation to \u201csell his ideas\u201d and to file lawsuits to protect his intellectual capital.\u00a0 The money he derived was then returned to the community in the form of philanthropy designed to help budding inventors.<\/p>\n

A more critical looks at Lemelson\u2019s career is found in A History of Inventing in New Jersey: From Edison to the Ice Cream Cone<\/em>, by Linda J. Barth.\u00a0\u00a0 She concedes that, despite his philanthropy, his career mostly consisted of filing patents and suing companies and customers who, allegedly infringed them, an approach she was clearly uncomfortable with.\u00a0 Barth characterizes him as \u201cnot conduct[ing] much laboratory or manufacturing work\u201d and she relates the following anecdote to drive home the point that much of his activity centered on litigation.<\/p>\n

An example is a suit against Kellogg cereals. Lemelson submitted to the cereal company an idea for printing a children\u2019s mask on the box that could be cut out and worn. Kellogg dismissed the idea, as it had used cut-out masks in the past. Lemelson then obtained a patent for his particular mask and later sued Kellogg when he saw a printed mask on a box of Corn Flakes.<\/div>\n

In her closing paragraphs, Barth writes<\/p>\n

Today, the Lemelson debate goes on. \u2026On the August 20, 2005 broadcast of ABC News, Adam Goldman said \u201cto his many detractors, Lemelson\u2019s patents were, in fact, worthless.\u00a0 Lemelson, they say, was one of the great frauds of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/div>\n

In the article Down but Not Out<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> R.\u00a0 P.\u00a0 Siegel points out that Lemelson\u2019s inventions were \u201coften so far ahead of their time that, in many cases, the technology required to build them did not yet exist.\u201d Siegel also goes on to say that \u201ca big part of Lemelson\u2019s success was that he filed patent applications that remained pending for decades, and delayed work to his advantage.\u201d Since patent applications remain hidden until the patent is granted, decades of delay on Lemelson\u2019s part meant that other companies would unintentionally \u2018re-invent the wheel\u2019 by bringing a similar idea to market only to find later that they were subject to an accusation of patent infringement.<\/p>\n

These so-called submarine patents<\/a> enabled Lemelson\u2019s Licensing Management Corporation to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from companies around the world.\u00a0 Siegel cites that Las Vegas Judge Phillip M. Pro, who ruled 14 of Lemelson\u2019s patents as \u201cinvalid and unenforceable\u201d partially due to the submarine aspect but partially for lack of enablement, which means that no person skilled in the art could produce the device based on the teaching of the specification.\u00a0 According to Jesse Jenner, the lead attorney representing Cognex, a company that disputed Lemelson\u2019s claims of patent infringement, \u201cthese \u2026 rulings assert that no one, including Lemelson\u2019s himself, ever built the machine vision system or bar-code scanner he licensed to thousands of companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea that Lemelson\u2019s patents are fraudulent is vocalized most forcefully by Mike Masnick, in a post entitled Lemelson\u2019s Legacy: Great Inventor or Patent Hoarder<\/em><\/a>, in which he characterizes Lemelson as a \u201ccomplete fraud\u201d who hoarded ideas and patents that effectively held companies, who actually did innovate and perform the hard work needed to bring a product to market, for ransom.\u00a0 Masnick concludes by describing Lemelson as being \u201cmore a science fiction writer than an inventor\u201d and that \u201ccrediting Lemelson with machine vision is like saying Jules Verne invented space travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what to make of Lemelson?\u00a0 In the process of wrestling with the facts surrounding his career, one must inevitably ask what the role of idea versus industry is in the economy.\u00a0 Certainly, having a good idea is a commodity that should reap an economic reward and one\u2019s immediate sympathy most likely goes to the \u2018idea holder\u2019 and, by all accounts, Lemelson had ideas.\u00a0 But a bit of reflection should walk one away from the perspective that the \u2018idea holder\u2019 is pre-eminent.\u00a0 If it is simply a matter of having an idea a without having the will power and means to bring it to fruition, then Lemelson should not be credited with the invention of the industrial robot anymore than anyone else who came after GK Chesterton.<\/p>\n

Chesterton, who cared little for machines and industry and modern economies, introduced the concept of the robot in his short story The Invisible Man<\/em>, in 1911, roughly two decades before Lemelson was ever born.\u00a0 In this story, Chesterton foresees a future layered littered with mechanical helpers:<\/p>\n

The man called Angus emptied his coffee-cup and regarded her with mild and patient eyes. Her own mouth took a slight twist of laughter as she resumed, \u201cI suppose you\u2019ve seen on the hoardings all about this \u2018Smythe\u2019s Silent Service\u2019? Or you must be the only person that hasn\u2019t. Oh, I don\u2019t know much about it, it\u2019s some clockwork invention for doing all the housework by machinery. You know the sort of thing: \u2018Press a Button \u2014 A Butler who Never Drinks.\u2019 \u2018Turn a Handle \u2014 Ten Housemaids who Never Flirt.\u2019 You must have seen the advertisements. Well, whatever these machines are, they are making pots of money; and they are making it all for that little imp whom I knew down in Ludbury.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

As Smythe took the handles and they turned the great corner of the street, Angus was amused to see a gigantesque poster of \u201cSmythe\u2019s Silent Service,\u201d with a picture of a huge headless iron doll, carrying a saucepan with the legend, \u201cA Cook Who is Never Cross.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI use them in my own flat,\u201d said the little black-bearded man, laughing, \u201cpartly for advertisements, and partly for real convenience. Honestly, and all above board, those big clockwork dolls of mine do bring your coals or claret or a timetable quicker than any live servants I\u2019ve ever known, if you know which knob to press. But I\u2019ll never deny, between ourselves, that such servants have their disadvantages, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndeed?\u201d said Angus; \u201cis there something they can\u2019t do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d replied Smythe coolly; \u201cthey can\u2019t tell me who left those threatening letters at my flat.<\/p><\/div>\n

A critic might be inclined to point out that Lemelson did more that have an idea, since one can\u2019t just patent an idea, but that point is fairly well retired by both the Corn Flakes anecdote above and the fact that, as Judge Pro ruled, many of Lemelson\u2019s patents could not actually be used to build a device that achieved the idea.<\/p>\n

Sad to say, it seems that Lemelson\u2019s usual bag of tricks was to dream up an idea any futurist might have and then to slap just enough \u2018hard science\u2019 onto it to serve as a fig leaf covering the basic fact that his ideas were naked.\u00a0 He then seems to use the strategy in dragging his applications out until real inventors, independently having similar ideas, caught technology up to the point where an actual device were possible.\u00a0 At that point, Lemelson surfaces and sues real innovators<\/a> who had never heard of either him or his shadow idea.\u00a0 This is clearly not an actual desirable good in society and any economic rewards along these lines merely incentivizes more of the same and more waste on the part of individuals and companies that really invent.\u00a0 Thankfully, Congress put an end to the submarine patent with the Uruguay Round Agreement Act in June 8, 1995.\u00a0 Hopefully we won\u2019t see another Lemelson as long as we live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An old adage says there are always two sides to every story and this is certainly true about the life and controversial career of inventor Jerome Lemelson.\u00a0 What makes his... Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":876,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions\/876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}