"Flash of Genius" movie

(...)

"The week was marked by a short burst of laughter followed by several sleepless nights on the couch."

:)

--Winston

I thought Geo. Westinghouse using Telsa's ideas scrapped Edisons bad ideas.

Wes

Rainx, to heck with the wipers.

Wes

Another thought is on low power cycles where the power is cycled on and off, where is that platter (and dinner) in relation to power on cycles?

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

I'll second that! It's great stuff, pity it doesn't last longer before it needs re-doing.

On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:21:35 +0800, the infamous "Den" scrawled the following:

I'll third that!

I do my windshield about 3 times a year, but only do the side and rear windows once. Initial application takes about half an hour, to clean the windows and RainX 'em. Redoing the windshield takes five minutes.

Does anyone use FogX inside? How does it fare?

-- The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

I bought some windshield wiper fluid once with rainx in it. That worked really well.

Wes

No, it was still in use until a few years ago.

Microsoft ships theirs. :(

I used to make my own washer fluid with Rainx, alcohol, industrial glass cleaner and the blue stuff as a base. Now, I just use Rainx washer fluid. Not as good as mine but passable.

I'll never get another patent! Too expensive and the Russians ripped me off!

You should have patented it ;)

Wes

Passable? You're not supposed to drink it, Tom! ;-)

Indeed.

Intersting. I would have sworn that all were vacuum powered at that time -- but apparently I just neve looked at a high-end car from that period -- or at least not with the idea of examining the windshield wiper motor. I do know that the vacuum-operated ones were really nasty, as when you were accelerating (and thus needed them most) they would slow to a crawl. :-)

I don't know -- yet. For that matter it may be something which I have made and just take for granted, and nobody else knows about. :-)

:-)

Obvious to me, at least. :-)

I do have a few patents (with the government having free access to them, because I was working for the government at that time, and they paid for the processing of the patents. :-) I considered each to be obvious to *me* at least - since I was the one who thought of them.

Enjoy, DoN.

My employer paid $500 or $1k and I never felt shorted during the process, but 5 years later when the subpoena to defend the a patent that had been sold to a bunch of litigous trolls showed up 4 days before Christmas, I was way less than pleased. After spending a couple of days preparing and giving deposition, I felt distinctly screwed on that $500 or $1k.

Filing patents for your employer is a lot like signing up for the military in peacetime for their college benefits. You may get what you expected, but you may wind up getting a completely different education, at a time you did not expect.

BobH

(...)

You are too modest, DoN.

--Winston

Why? The $500 or $1K was an "award" or honorarium for assigning rights to said to your employer. Defending it is then his problem. If he needs your help, he should pay for your time and services like he does for any other time and services.

I'm seeing more gimmewhine than professional here. Signing with the military in peacetime or anytime conveys obligations as well as benefits. Well duh! The military does not exist primarily to provide college benefits. It exists to defend the nation against enemies foreign and domestic. There is never a guarantee that there won't be any enemies around during your service period. Pick yer pony, take yer ride.

If your employer wants your professional services to help defend his patent, fine. If he doesn't, that's his choice.

Part of being a professional is being ready to move at any time. The alternative is becoming an indentured servant in exchange for an illusion of security. Having to move can certaintly be very inconvenient and expensive. In my case, clear willingness to do it if and when necessary always made it unnecessary.

It would take singularly stupid management to piss off their most prolific inventors, but there's no shortage of stupid management and that does seem to be getting worse. My experience is dated, having been retired for 9 years now.

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.

In the Twin Cities, there's an inventors club that meets monthly. This sort of thing is exactly what they meet about. The mentor of that club puts on a one day seminar now and then that explains how to go about patenting things. The point is, as some other posters have said, ideas ARE a dime a dozen. It's the people who push them that make them go.

One saying around the company I worked for was: "Prove that you can sell $100,000 worth of them (it) in the first year or forget it."

Hey, Tom, are you related to the folks who made the movie? Was all this just to sell more tickets? ---Just kidding.

Pete Stanaitis

----------------------------

Tom Gardner wrote:

Every patent I have disclosed to an employer came with the express language that you would help them or their assignee defend the patent. There was no language in the subpoena suggesting that there is any compensation or anything other than negative consequences for ignoring it.

This is pretty much my point. Filling in the patent disclosure carries obligations as well as the payoff. It is completely obvious that signing up for the military carries obligations, that is why I used it for comparison.

I would have been fine with defending the patent if I had any connection to the litigants. That was the obligation I thought I was signing up for when I filed the disclosure. As it was, both companies were operations that I have very low regard for and unrelated to the company that I filed the disclosure to.

I think that the expectations between an employer and employee have changed. In todays engineering world, most employers will put you on the street if it solves a quartely cash flow problem. That lack of long term trust, means that employers cannot ask as much of the employee anymore. I have done two interstate moves for employers and at this point, I might do another one, but it would have to be to somewhere I want to go.

You picked a good time to retire. Engineering has changed markedly in the last decade. I have another 10 years to go before I retire.

BobH

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

Use to obtain the patents.

Joe Gwinn