Court Agrees That Lemelson Patents More Science Fiction Than Science Innovation
from the maybe-he-can-win-a-nebula-award dept
Last month we pointed to articles concerning the legacy of Jerome Lemelson, and whether he was a patent hoarder who patented "science fiction" ideas or a visionary inventor. The second part of the article focused on the lawsuit against Lemelson, which was being pursued by someone who wasn't even being sued by Lemelson's lawyers, but whose customers were. Even though many people couldn't understand why this guy was suing over the legitimacy of these patents, he felt that it was important to stand up to a patent bully on principle. And, it's looking like he won. A Federal Appeals court has upheld the ruling invalidating some "key" patents of Lemelson's that were being used to extract tons of cash from companies who were doing the actual innovating and actually getting products to market that had little, if anything, to do with the ideas in the patent.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
51 years later...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]