Editorial

Hunting in the Big Brain Preserve Patents not only constitute the infrastructure for technology, they provide an effective battleground as well. By Lindsey Vereen

Here's a scandal for you: Thomas Edison enlisted young boys to collect stray dogs and cats so that he could electrocute them in the presence of the media and thus demonstrate the peril of alternating current. This rare insight into one of our foremost inventors and technological icons was published by Margaret Cheney in her book Tesla: Man Out of Time (Dell, NYC, 1981). Edison, who promoted direct current as safe power, was in a battle with George Westinghouse, whose dream it was to power the country with AC. Westinghouse was using patents belonging to Nicola Tesla, to whom he agreed to pay royalties of $2.50 per horsepower of electricity sold. (Largely forgotten today, except for the Tesla coil, Tesla held patents on AC induction motors and was instrumental in the development of radio.)

Tesla's royalties began to mount up more rapidly than anyone dreamed. When they reached $12 million, Tesla, at the behest of Westinghouse, relinquished his claim on past royalties and sold the patents to him outright for $216,000.

Intellectual property is the infrastructure that supports our economy, especially since the industrial revolution. Since technology builds upon technology, the rate of increase increases, and our technological house of cards grows upon an ever more complex matrix of ideas and algorithms.

Patent protection is enormously important. As market research firm Dataquest points out, "since 1982, patent litigation has increased by more than 50 percent. A company with astute patent enforcement will realize additional revenue without creating ill will among its user community. However, enforcement of a patent that does not appear to merit enforcement can have horrific results, especially in terms of public relations."

Intellectual property battles, usually reach our consciousness via lurid newspaper headlines, such as those regarding the Intel vs. AMD face-offs, or TI's use of patents as royalty (read revenue ) generators. Patents are the coinage of our time and must be protected. Still, sometimes these machinations seem foolish, inappropriate, or motivated by blind greed.

For example, late last December Unisys and CompuServe told users of the Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) image format that they had until January 10 to register and pay a quarterly royalty or face lawsuits for their past usage. The GIF was developed by CompuServe in 1987 and is based on Unisys technology patented in 1984, according to Dataquest. What took them so long to mount their defense?

Patent litigation is not a pretty sight. As those of you who have experienced patent litigation may have noticed, a court trial does not necessarily turn on the merits of the case, but often wanders into a morass of piddling, irrelevant issues. Finding good solutions requires patience and good will. They must reward patent holders but not stall technological evolution.

A final note: Tesla, always a visionary, lost vast sums of money--often other people's--on impractical ideas such as death rays and the wireless transmission of power. By giving up his AC patent royalties, he denied himself the ability to fund future work. He died on Jan. 7, 1943 in relative obscurity. Ironically, on June 21, 1943, the United States Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision in favor of Marconi and ruled that Nicola Tesla held the fundamental patents on radio.

Lindsey Vereen is editor-in-chief of Integrated System Design.

integrated system design  March 1995