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Blue LED Inventor Loses Patent Fight 317

Posted by Hemos from the not-just-the-us-patent-system dept.
Swamp writes "Just a little heads-up for you engineers. The Mainichi Daily News is running this story saying 'A Nobel Prize candidate who invented a blue light-emitting diode (LED) used for display panels has no patent rights over the product as he conceded it to his former employer, a court ruled Thursday.' 'Japan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors.' I guess not even being a Nobel Prize [contender] gives you credit anymore." His 20,000 yen bonus is about US$162 now.
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Blue LED Inventor Loses Patent Fight More

Blue LED Inventor Loses Patent Fight

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  • True or false? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I read that Steve Wozniak wanted blue LEDs to line the underground caves he build for his autistic son, but back in 1993 or 4 when it was constructed, no one made blue LEDs.

    So, Woz apparently had to buy 100,000 of them (at something like $3-4 each) even though he only needed a few thousand, the rest ended up being sold in smaller lots and "jump starting" blue LED availability, at least here on the West Coast.

    Does anyone out there happen to know if this story is true? I've always wondered.

    • Re:True or false? (Score:3, Informative)

      by AtariKee ( 455870 )
      At one time you could write Woz and ask him yourself, but he's a bit swamped [woz.org] at the moment. You might want to read his answers to other letters [woz.org] to see if the answer is there.


      • At one time you could write Woz and ask him yourself, but he's a bit swamped [woz.org] at the moment. You might want to read his answers to other letters [woz.org] to see if the answer is there. Uh, when will he open up his webpage? I have tried to open the URL with Internet Explorer (The page cannot be displayed) & Mozilla (connection refused) and the page simply will not load. I can see the page content with GOOGLE cache, but nowhere else. Frankly this is sad behavior from the comedic genius behind the Mac (and much more valueable than that smirking nitwit Steve Jobs).

  • Bonus (Score:2, Interesting)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 )
    That's 161 dollars more than I got for any of my 12 patents.

  • What about my rights? (Score:3, Funny)

    by doc_traig ( 453913 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @08:06PM (#4301167) Homepage Journal
    I invented the Scroll Lock key. Maybe it's time I start looking for those royalties. And no, it doesn't matter that you don't use it!

    - DDT

  • Labor/Capital balance gone awry? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OhYeah! ( 445727 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @08:06PM (#4301168)
    This reminds me of Kary Mullis who invented PCR. His company was sold for $700M on the basis of that invention, he got a $10K bonus.

    Scientists should unionize - they typically so involved in their work that they end up getting the *shaft* monetarily, while MBA monkeys soak up all the profits.

    • You should read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". It's about the USA's intellectual elite going on strike because they are tired of being abused by fat-cat carpetbagger politicians and the imbecilic masses.

      Actually, the book is snobbish, very poorly written, and far too long, but the concept is interesting.
    • This reminds me of Kary Mullis who invented PCR. His company was sold for $700M on the basis of that invention, he got a $10K bonus.

      This looks like another good example. Although you could have mentioned wtf a PCR is.

      For others like me, PCR stands for "Polymerase chain reaction. A method use to make multiple copies of DNA." (danke Google)
    • Feynman once made a cute quote about his Feynman Lectures on Physics, and some other publications. All the proceeds of which went to CalTech, and nothing to him. He commented how this was the same for some fello Nobel Laureates he knew.

      He said something to the effect of "I guess we giants of physics are midgets of finance". It was kind of cute.

    • IE:Professional societies that closely resemble 'lodges' ... guys like the masons, glassblowers, or the starguild of Dune fame.
      Not in the sense that we keep our knowledge secret, but in the sense that anyone who does 'the work' (whatever that might be) can join and speak and Move as one voice, IYGWIM.
      Let's face it. The tech classes and the worker (fruit pickers, farmers, assemblers, etc) classes have much more in common than we see at first blush.
      1) We provide a VITAL service to any capitalist economy, and could really fuck it up if we chose to.
      2) What we do is mostly invisible. Everything Just Works(TM) when we're doing it right, and SINCE we're doing it right, we're unappreciated.

      We really should form guilds and unions so as to exercise our collective clout in a manner that will be noticed by those freeloading bastards who play currency against currency, do differentials on options, etc.. No useful work whatsoever, yet they claim to control our lives.
      Guess what?
      They don't.
      A global 'geek strike', work slowdown, or even better, (twirls moustache) a sudden 'stupidity strike' (oooh! looky! shiny server crashy! Code really bad!) would get these lusers' attention.
      Only Guilds or something like them could accomplish this. You need members who all agree to do something in unison. We don't have that yet.
      GeekPac is a teensy tiny baby step in the right direction, but it will fail.
      Until we learn to act as one, and embrace a common ideal, we won't make a dent.
      This ain't hard guys.
      It might take secret handshakes (chuckle), actual face-to-face contact (OHMIGOD!) and shit like that to get it done, but it CAN be done!
      Think about it.

      Btw, we should try to bring the fruit guys and the farmers with us.
      Let us leave No Man Behind!
      (notajoke)

      • I once worked for a company where we were in such a union. Association of Scientists and Professional Engineering Personnel (ASPEP). They had a collective bargaining agreement and were able to get a (slightly) better deal for their employees. The dues were more than reasonable (pennies, really) but the progress they got was limited. Some employees complained that they didn't push the company hard enough, but the company was barely staying afloat as it was so there wasn't much that could be done anyhow. Nevertheless, I thought it was a neat idea.
      • No useful work whatsoever,

        This is the standard liberal bogeyman.

        "Nobody understands me. I do all the work in this company. I don't get paid enough. I know my boss gets paid more,and he's incompetent".

        It doesn't take a union to control your own life. A union is what you turn to when you abdicate control over your own life because you're too weak and you fall prey to the local mafia thug (eg: local 217).

        Especially in the tech industry, where people are paid well, employment is generally good, and employees are given lots of perks. There are fewer jobs, but the fooseball table is still there ,and I've not heard of many companies instituting uniforms or dress codes.

        Oh, poor you, you don't understand what Marketing, Finance, Sales, and Management people do, so you assume they do no useful work whatsoever. Tough titties. Either learn enough about business to see why they are getting paid more than you....(if they are. I once worked with a VP of marketing that was getting paid less then me, and it hasn't been uncommon for CEOs I work for to be getting paid less than me- usually the CEOs take compensation in stock and are thus incurring significant risk in the process-- and on average that risk has only broken even.) Or shut up and remain a bedwetter.

        But the last thing you need is to bring the local goons into the mix.

        I will never support a union for tech workers affiliated with any of the big unions (and they always are.)

        And I will make it clear to any employer that I refuse to be represented by a union-- that is if I ever go work for anyone again.

        And I will not tolerate unionizing of my employees. IF they are unhappy they can bring their issues to me. If they are unable to understand why things are the way they are, and they want to bring violence and force to bear (Which is what a unions is for) then they should seek employment elsewhere.

        Collective bargaining is 4 or 5 employees coming to me and telling me that they'd rather have a fooseball table than the pacman machine we'd talked about getting. Of course I'm going to listen to that.

        Collective bargaining is employees telling me that they'd rather take stock than cash, and of course I'd look into that (there are legal issues with it.)

        Or that the parking situation seems unfair, or that they think marketing set a poor date for release or any of the dozens of issues that come up in a company every month that have to be worked on, fixed, or explained.

        Unionization is when some guy who does not work for the company ,does not know what the company does, or its state of affairs, comes in and demands that I give him control of the company, or he will shut the company down. Unions are an agent of violence force and extortion.

        The only reasonable response to such a threat is to tell them to piss off and to never enter your property again. Then go tell the employees that you are willing to listen to employee issues but you will not deal with terrorists and thugs. That any union employee is free to leave that day and never return and that you'll be happy to replace them with people with enough horse sense to come to you and work out the issues or understanding of the way business works and economic realities. Who needs employees who don't know business and want to bring in thugs to get something for nothing? Hell, if they are already thinking like that they are not part of the team and are not pulling their weight. They are deadweight to begin with.

        The idea that business doesn't know the value of tech people is idiotic. Sure, a few don't, but they are not doing well-- we just had a boom in bonuses and a feeding frenzy over tech employees. Now that the market has changed they haven't forgotten tech workers value, they just have more to choose from and competition is different.

        Generally, employers in the US compensate tech workers very well.

        Anyone in this day and age saying that tech workers need to organize is someone who wants something for nothing.

        If you're a tech worker in this country and you have a job, odds are very good that you're being well and fully compensated.

  • Nichia...owns the patent because Nakamura had signed a certificate handing the ownership of the patent to the company....[he] countered by saying that the certificate is invalid because he didn't know scientists working for a company could legally claim patents for their products when he signed the certificate...apan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors.

    Sort of like the countless articles about boohoo musical acts that decide after taking the signing bonuses and all the perks that they don't like the RIAA, this is a case of "guy signs away everything and now wants an undo button".

  • I can see both sides (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trepidity ( 597 ) <delirium-slashdotNO@SPAMhackish.org> on Friday September 20, 2002 @08:09PM (#4301180)
    On the one hand, it is true that patent law is becoming increasingly skewed against individual inventors. But on the other hand, if your job at a company is to come up with new ideas and methods of doing [whatever your particular field is], it wouldn't make much sense if you could come up with them, patent them, and then hold the company hostage, demanding they license your ideas. I mean that was what they were paying you for in the first place.

    • Re:I can see both sides (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OhYeah! ( 445727 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @08:15PM (#4301205)
      "I mean that was what they were paying you for in the first place."

      Lots of professionals are able to hold on to a piece of their work, even if they did it under contract/salary. Think Hollywood, songwriters, photographers, some journalists, etc. Why couldn't it be different for scientists? No Reason! It would be trivial to arrange for a few percent royalty on Patents developed. Many universities operate this way with an 80%university/20%researcher split.

      • Re:I can see both sides (Score:2, Informative)

        by ivan256 ( 17499 )
        Lots of professionals are able to hold on to a piece of their work, even if they did it under contract/salary. Think Hollywood, songwriters, photographers, some journalists, etc.

        Actually, photographers are the only group that is true for. If you pay somebody to create something, then it should be yours at the end. If it's worth more then what was paid, then that should have been taken into account during negotiations. (A royalties split would be a good way to do it)

        Photographers shouldn't get to keep rights over work you pay them to do.
        • Actually, photographers are the only group that is true for. If you pay somebody to create something, then it should be yours at the end.

          Authors also keep their copyright to their work, of course they usually write first and license to the publishing companies/magazines.

          Film companies get a copyright, but when you think about how much work goes into making a film, it makes sense. Music companies get the copyright to their artist's music, but that's just because they've been able to rape musicians for a lot of money.
          • Authors also keep their copyright to their work

            Not if it's work-for-hire, which is a better equivalent of what's going on here. The same is actually true for some photographers, although that means putting them on salary instead of contract, and most employers don't want to incur that expense.

      • With songwriters, you can say "you get 10% of the profits from the sale of this album," which is relatively straightforward to measure (and even then you have a lot of disputes). With industrial patents, it's a lot more nebulous. How do you determine how much money the company has made from your patent? For example, say they make something with a blue LED. What percentage of the value of that product does the blue LED account for?
        • you can say "you get 10% of the profits from the sale of this album," which is relatively straightforward to measure

          The point where they screw you is the word "profits". Profit is not straightforward. This is why movies like Forrest Gump rake in hundreds of millions of dollars and authors (Winston Groom, in this case) don't make a lot because they were promised a percentage of net profits, not gross profits. If you think Arthur Andersen was doing creative accouting, you haven't heard what Los Angeles production companies publish as the ultimate in fiction: their accounting books. All sorts of movies that make a lot of money are on the books as losing money and if your calculations are on the net profit and some of the producers promise themselves X megabucks regardless of income, then the movie might never see a net profit. Those in the know make sure that they're signed on for a percentage of the gross profits instead.
          It's the new and naive who fall for the net profits.

          And in fact, this is also how songwriters and musicians get screwed. A few kilobucks as an advance may sound great to a start-up band and they sign on without looking at the details of the contract. They have then entered indentured servitude where the record producers get to dictate whether they will accept the quality of the product submitted to them AND they get to charge for studio time, production time, art work, pressing the discs, promotion, all of which take a big chunk of the money before anything even makes it to the artist.

          It's actually quite difficult to assign the value of a single element to a whole. How about the digit 'zero'? Prior to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, the standard for written numerals in the west was the Roman Numeral system: not conducive to multiplication or division easily, and not too easy to write fractions with (as the sumerians and babylonians could with their systems). Now admittedly, the zero is only 10 percent of the numerals usually written, but as a place holder to indicate orders of magnitude or a missing value at an order of magnitude, it's priceless.
      • Ok.. it was the 70's and I was probably buzzed, but I was told by the IBM salesguy who had shown us that neat APL/Basic toteable box they were marketing at the time (51xx?) that anyone who chalked up a patent or significant invention/process improvement got a cut of the profits/savings/royalties that they had created, and due to Blue's pervasiveness, that those perks could add up to some rather princely sums for the contributor.
        My take on IBM at the time is that they were exceedingly generous to their employees.
        As they are NOW exceedingly generous to US, as the OSS community, it would seem that some of that elder ethos has hung on.
        Input?
    • Sure, but there are two issues with what you say. Considering that the company will make hundreds of billions of dollars off the patent, there is no MORAL way for the company to claim it without putting the inventor and his family on easy street for the rest of thier lives. And second, how quickly are the rest of the scientsts going to work now that they know that thier inventions can be taken away... they might as well invent nothing and get paid thier normal salary and then come out with the full-scale inventions after everyone gets laid off. How does that help humanity?

  • 'Deserving Bonuses' (Score:5, Funny)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @08:12PM (#4301191) Journal
    His 20,000 yen bonus is about US$162 now.
    <sarcasm>
    Yes, but $162 buys about 32,400 LEDs. Do you realize how long it would have taken him to make those himself by hand?
    </sarcasm>

  • He who laughs last... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by QuantumWeasel ( 606327 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @08:14PM (#4301198)
    ... may not be any richer for it.

    Dr. Nakamura is one of those exceptionally rare individuals who can genuinely claim that he did something novel and revolutionary. It's amazing how quickly the holy grail of blue laser diodes has been accepted as commonplace.

    The irony is, he worked something like 15 years within Nichia to get it done. You'd think his former employer could at least spot him a few million Yen in good faith. (Note that Nichia was supporting his work all the while, when many respected labs would have thought his work too speculative.)

    Too bad the Nobel monies -- if awarded -- would be a pittance compared to what Dr. Nakamura is due.

    • You don't have to be a semiconductor physicist to appreciate the book: The Blue Laser Diode: The Complete Story [amazon.com].

      If you are a semiconductor physicist, you already know what a challenging system gallium nitride is, but the book is still a good read.

    • Re:He who laughs last... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Thalia ( 42305 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:00AM (#4301901)
      I don't know, paying the guy his salary for 15 years while he's working this the supposed "blue LED" is not half bad. Admittedly, it's not millions, but even in US dollars, I bet he was paid over $1million over those 15 years.

      If Nakamura had preferred to work on his own, and not draw a salary, he could have made all the money. The company takes a risk in paying the salary to the researcher, hoping that sooner or later a valuable invention is made. You can't expect them to keep paying and not get the actual end result.

      The counter examples given above (hollywood script writers, song writers, etc) aren't on salary. It's a very different world if you're employed... and paid to research.

      Thalia
    • A million yen is still only something like $9000. Even a few of those is still nothing compared to his salary as a professor at UCSB. I hope the university affords him all the equipment and money necessary to do more research. At least at a university, the ownership of the work is held by the inventor, even if the research work was paid for by a corporate or government sponsor (the sponsor usually gets unlimited free usage, I believe).

  • No offense but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Twid ( 67847 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @08:14PM (#4301201) Homepage
    I doubt this guy was rich enough to start his own Blue LED research lab, which I am sure cost millions and millions of dollars.

    If he wants to own his own patents, I'm sure there is no law in japan stopping him from quitting and starting his own lab with his own money.

    This is just crazy to me. The guy is a RESEARCHER working for a COMPANY and people think that he should have a right to the PATENTS on things that he researched and invented ON THE JOB?

    This is as bad as the MP3 whiners. Want free music? Make some, and give it away. Problem solved.
    • You certainly have a point there, but please, remember that the person is Japanese. This implies a whole different work culture, which may (and will) not correspond to the one you've seen.

      As far as I know, the Japanese value their work and their job takes top priority. I don't claim I understand the intricacies within, but I'm sure our Western values do not apply.

      Slashdot has time and time again shown that it's a service (?) for Americans, and other cultures aren't understood here. I'm going to be moderated down for this, but what the hell, got karma to burn:

      There are other cultures than American. Deal with it. You don't have a snowball's chance in hell to understand them because you never cared in the first place. Don't criticize something you can't understand.
      • Don't criticize something you can't understand.

        No. Always, always, ALWAYS critizie that which you can't understand. Those that do understand it will defend it, or the overly cumbersome lie will come to rule us all.

        see: Communism. The Inquisition. Thong underwear.

    • Re:No offense but... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )
      I'm sure there is no law in japan stopping him from quitting and starting his own lab with his own money.


      1. Work on revolutionary product for firm with deep pockets
      2. Make a major breakthrough
      3. Hide major breakthrough from employers
      4. Quit your job
      5. Spend a little to open (what you will tell everyone, is) a lab.
      6. Spend hours in lab, watching TV
      7. Come out with patentable idea that you invented in your "lab".
      8. Patent Idea
      9. ???
      10. Profit!

      Yeah, longer than the usual 3/4-step process, but it works out much better.
    • No offense, but isn't the whole point of capitalism to serve the interests of capital? And isn't it in the best interest of capital to reward those make your company a whole bunch of money? I mean, you can go around beating your dog whenever he licks your hand, but he probably won't be licking your hand for very long. Similarly, if you want to attract the best and brightest minds, you should probably reward the ones who actually DO come up with the groundbreaking applications/products. A couple of million dollars is hella incentive to come up with the next revolutionary invention, wouldn't you agree? Much more than, say, GETTING THE SHAFT APPLIED TO THE RECTAL AREA YET AGAIN, perhaps?

      Sorry if I'm being to radical here. I just think that if you are going to be a good little capitalist you should at least play by the rules of capitalism. Unfortunately a lot of corporations these days practice a sort of soft communism where the administrators set the plan, divide the profits among themselves, and keep the prols in line with an alternating conga line of downsizing consultants and motivational speakers. No wonder they have to cook the books in order to look good to their shareholders.

    • Re:No offense but... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by iamacat ( 583406 )
      I am also sure there is no law in Japan against this guy sharing his opinion about the COMPANY with business magazines, top Ph.D. students about to look for industry jobs and so on. He can make a point that this company is known to screw it's employees and is therefore also likely to screw it's business partners. Him being a Nobel winner, people will listen much more to him than say to slashdot posts. If he still works on LEDs in some form, he can also develop impovements to the process and then license them to Nichia for a "reasonable" fee. He can also move to some country that would recognize his rather than company's right to the patent and flood the marker with cheap blue LEDs. The bottom line is that a corporation is much like a person. I have a legal right to do a lot of nasty things but then eventually nobody will deal with me. On the other hand, if the company shared 0.1% of it's profit from blue LEDs with the inventor, they would right now have to fight off the world's best scientists trying to sign up.

    • ...but he deserves more. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well, I think I should point out that:

      1. This was an underground, one-man work done under a pressure from the company to stop him. In fact, this work had pretty much destroyed his career in this company (even AFTER the invention).
      2. They didn't know he was working on this and making a significant progress until somebody outside read his paper (which he published secretly as research activity was not welcomed) and asked about it.
      3. Although law doesn't forbid it, firing or quitting is quite unrealistic in this part of Japan. Anyone who do would be considered as a loser - not a good reputation to have. It was good for him that he found a great reason to get out - it's really stupid that he had nowhere to go in Japan even after the invention.

      That said, even with his lossage, I think he had won. Before this fight, it was not widely known that person who did the invention did have copyright on one's work. It was assumed - just like the air - that company owns everything even without any specific agreement. Now everyone know that they do have a right and does not necessary have to give it away for free upon employment. Nakamura's major goal with this fight was to raise controversy on this copyright issue, and it is now accomplished.

      Now, commenting on detail, I won't be surprised if he had signed the thing even without reading a single word on it - there was a time that people believed that company will do you a good if you blindly follow what they tell you to do. So his 20,000yen was probably not paid for the invention itself, but was more like a "bonus" in Japanese way.

      In Japan, you get "bonus" twice a year. Everyone get it if anyone gets it. You don't get it for doing exceptional work or such, but company gives it to you to show that they care about you. But telling the truth, it's actually a part of your regular salary - you just get less monthly payment. You can tell because when you make a loan from a bank, it is always suggested to pay more back on month you get your bonus. Ever heard of a "bonus" that is expected to be given every year on same month? Well, this is the one and meaning of the word is really blurring here (though things are changing).

      I bet this 20,000yen was given in similar way - not for his invention, but just as some kind of social custom. The company just had to give him the money. On the other hand, the only way for Nakamura to get acknowledgement was by receiving the money. At the time, both of them probably didn't even had in their mind that they were exchanging the invention and the money.

      But anyway, he did sign the agreement, and the court judgment is made. I think court decision was fair enough from today's standard, but feel pretty sad because they never mentioned one important piece on this case - history. In Japan, signing an agreement was traditionally not considered that important or critical. It's not that people ignored it - but it's just they "believed" unwritten social contract would protect them more than signed paper would. This was especially true for a relation between employer and employee. Of course, this had never been a truth in the court (but it was so uncommon to use the court in old days), and this is why Nakamura is having a problem right now. I'm expecting more and more "Nakamura"s are following - rebellion against a company that one used to believe as an absolute (but nice) ruler.

    • Scientific American did a profile on him and his unbelieveably brilliant work. He solved the problems everyone else was trying to solve with mountians of money with little more than table scrapps. His work was the fruit of his singular pursuit and almost inhuman determination. The support his company gave him, if you can call it that, was limited enough that most research universities could have made room for it, to say nothing of how easy it would have been for him to get a government grant with some of his results with an all but abandoned technique.

      There's no question he company should own some of the patent. But his contribution was worth a hell of a lot more than $162 dollars US. If that's your reward for brilliance. Your blood sweat and tears forcing a brilliant concept down the throat of a company that doesn't fully appreciate it, finding somehow to not just keep the project alive, but to make it a world leader with a 6 month head start, in the semiconductor industry no less, and then have them keep the billions of dollars, cut you a check for a cool 162 bucks (before taxes), and a pat on the back, that's incentive to you, or anyone? I hope he gets all that's comming to him. His accomplishment is impressive. When viewed from the perspective of how little he did it with, it's simply astonishing. I'd hate to have as a research advisor, you're not going to get much sympathy if you say something can't be done.

  • Getting Screwed by your Employer (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There used to be a time when good advice was "don't bend over" in prison. Now I guess the same thing can be said about work.
  • It looks like we slashdotted their content server, but not the Web server:
    http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/

    The URL cannot be located on this server.
    Please click on : http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/ ,to redirect.
    In other words, "our index page is missing. Please go to our index page to find what you were looking for."

  • Face it... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OneFix ( 18661 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @08:17PM (#4301213)
    Corporations are not going to pay for employees to sit around all day doing expensive scientific research if they don't get the patents. The guy may have only been paid ~$162 for his patent, but how much did he earn from his employer while he was busy developing the technology?

    Now, if the guy was a janitor that happened to come up with a blue LED, then I might say he has a point....but, Nichia Corporation [nichia.com] is in the business of LEDs!!!
  • I'm curious. If you invent something in Japan, can you patent it first in, say, America, or any other place that you may not happen to live? And would it help you if you did? By 'help' I mean perhaps have a chance at realizing some personal gains from your intellectual property.

    Some ideas can be based upon new discovery of universal scientific truths. One would think that where the person who had an idea like this resided would be less important than in many other issues of law. Especially if there was a potential market in the location where the inventor patented it.

    Patents are so complicated.
  • Think of how many blue LED's $162 will buy!

    Yes, cheap sarcasim, I am trully crying inside at all these HORRIFIC patent laws... sad times indeed...

  • these things cost $3 apice and with his bonus for inventing them he could only buy 54 of them, jeez

  • Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ace905 ( 163071 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @09:15PM (#4301410) Homepage
    I read the exact story [wired.com] on this when Wired first published it, I believe it was called "True Boo-Roo" - a reference to the japanese use of the english language to discribe "true blue" since their word for Blue is the same as Green.

    What I don't find amazing is the fact that the company took the right to the Blue Led. In the wired article they talked about how the company funded his research efforts for YEARS hoping that he would develop something. I don't know about you, but if I were to make such a risky investment I'd expect something for it - like what I invested in.

    From the article itself, "Nakamura chose to work on gallium nitride not because he was confident of success, but "because I had had the bitter experience that if you do the same as everyone else, when it comes to making products, you can't sell them. So I chose a material that almost no one else was working on ... and our chairman and president let me have the money I needed."

    Not only did he let him have the money, he paid his salary as an inventor for the company. This case is rediculous, on this one I'm for the corporation.

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)

      by foghorn19 ( 108432 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @09:56PM (#4301571)
      I'm finishing up my PhD in Gallium Nitride research, and have been a part of the GaN effort at a U.S. university for ~ 6 years. The story is not as simple as it appears.

      Nakamura indeed got extensive support from the company. The company and Nakamura BOTH bet on this family of semiconductor materials, with Nakamura leading the way and the company providing him the money and the freedom to take the risky path. Before Nakamura's breakthrough inventions, Nichia sold phosphors for use in CRTs, stuff NOWHERE near semiconductor materials.

      Nakmura invented practically all the necessary materials science research and laboratory equipment to make blue LEDs feasible. At research conferences such as MRS (http://www.mrs.org) his results completely cleaned out the field. Lightyears ahead of the rest of the research community combined. He often did not understand the physics of the stuff to as much accuracy as others later figured out, but he made GaN WORK. He is an awesome inventor. Never took a vacation for more than a DECADE!

      Nichia owns more than a hundred patents because of the research he led and contributed to enormously. To be compensated a few thousand bucks for those patents (I believe it is $182 PER PATENT), is a frickin' JOKE. How bad will Nichia look if Nakamura gets a Nobel Prize and Nichia does not compensate him better?

      The commercial potential of GaN is ENORMOUS. In addition to blue LEDs, you have a huge improvement in optical storage (see http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/bd/ ).

      So, in a fair world, Nakamura would have been compensated much better than he has been. The rest of the researchers on his team should've been, too.

      F.

      • Since we're talking about materials, I am curious, what material is used for the (new?) Violet/UV LEDs? These things are quite nifty, as they actually generate black light (making things flouresce).

        I don't have any idea where they came from all of the sudden, but why aren't these at least as newsworthy as the blue LEDs? They have a shorter wavelength, so they should be more useful in applications which demand a higher frequency...

      • At the very least... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by emil ( 695 )

        ...Nichia should endow a chair at a major research institute and arrange to have Nakamura granted tenure.

        Nakamura's profession is scientific research. If relations have soured between Nichia and Nakamura to the extent that direct cooperation between them is no longer possible, then at the very least Nichia should arrange a setting where Nakamura can continue his research elsewhere.

        Lots of companies endow chairs at major universities, and there are significant tax benefits for doing so. Nakamura also has obviously wasted a large part of his career on this pointless lawsuit, and might welcome such an opportunity to return to his passion.

        Even if Nakamura has no interest in such an offer, the PR value for Nichia would be inestimable... right now their PR position seems very, very bad to me.

        Nichia, be a magnanimous victor.

    • I assume you apply the same rules to CEOs?

      And for that matter, to investors? After they get their 10-15% annual return, they've been justly compensated and surely couldn't ask for more?

  • Not news but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mark_space2001 ( 570644 )
    This is standard practice. Companies own the patents that result from your work on company time (some claim all patents, company time or not, which is a little murkier).

    This guy invented something on company time and that's it.

    I was reading elsewhere though, that the real tragedy is that Japanese companies do not reward their employs for the patents they do file. In the US, "real" companies will give employs 1-2K $ (or more) for patents, just because companies like to own patents. If it's a BIG patent, the inventor is more hansomely reward (often with stock and options).

    Because of this, Japanese employees really don't have much incentive to work on hard patents for their companies. Their are probably exceptions -- Sony comes to mind as a company that almost surely has a more sensible patent reward system. But many "common" Japanses companies don't see things as Sony does, and overall this tends to hurt the Japanese economy.

    So that's what's really going on here. This guy is trying to call attention to the fact that the common patent system in his country is broken and needs attention.

    • I used to work for a European Pharma. When you patented something (chemical usually) in the US, the company rewarded you with a one US dollar note in a plastic case. Apparently, by US law, the company had to somehow reward you. Obviously the one dollar was seen by most employees as a sick joke.

  • Shuji at UCSB (Score:4, Informative)

    by NeuroKoan ( 12458 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @09:42PM (#4301517) Homepage Journal
    Shuji is now a professor at UCSB and is making wonderful advancements in materials engineering. Here's a quick link to whats he's up to recently.
    http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/Announce/2awards.h tml [ucsb.edu].

    Just a little more information on this great thinker.

  • Blue LEDs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by balloonhead ( 589759 ) <doncuan@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Friday September 20, 2002 @09:49PM (#4301542)
    Yes, I see that he might have been hard done by. But as so many others have pointed out, he invented it on company time. It's theirs. He was being paid a salary to do this, why should he get the profit? Credit, yes. If he wanted to do it off his own back, then work for free.


    I do understand that he has innovated. But just as someone making burgers in company time cannot say that the burgers are his (made using their resources etc.), he has rented out his skills and the story implies that he should own whatever he did. Bugger that, I would be pretty unhappy paying an artist to work for me for a year to design a logo and then him telling me that he designed it, so he owns it, and I have to pay extra to use it. It's now my logo. He can take credit, I can profit. Else he can self fund that year.


    It doesn't matter how much the company paid him; it's a gamble for them; I am sure they paid a lot of potential innovators money but not all of them came up with the goods; they are a company, and only concerned (ultimately) with profit.


    Don't mod this as flamebait/troll etc. (you know who you are). It isn't. Use your mod points properly, or come back as AC and disagree.

  • Everyone is blowing it on this one (Score:5, Insightful)

    by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @10:05PM (#4301594) Homepage
    This invention, legally, undoubtedly belongs to the company. If you sign something, READ it. Even the fine print. If you don't understand it, make them explain it, and even better get your own lawyer to explain it. It sucks, but in business you can't always rely on the other party acting fairly. So he should chalk it up as an expensive lesson, and build off of the reputation he's earned. In the long term, he may find that his status in history as the inventor of the blue LED is more satisfying than if he had gotten money but less credit, and decide his situation is not nearly as bad as it could be. Now both recognition and money is nice, but at a guess it won't be hard for him to find another (very) well paying job.

    Now the company, on the other hand, should restrain themselves just a bit. Yes they have the patent, and for the interests of their company they should hold it, but paying the guy only 20,000 yen? How do they expect to retain or hire employees at those compensation rates? They are doing MAJOR damage to their future by having this be widely publicized. No one capable of high quality work will want to work for them, and while blue LED profits will keep them going it's going to be hard for them to create anything else new. And what happens when the patent eventually expires? They will be blown out of the market. So yes, they should keep the patent, but they should also reward the inventor at compensation levels appropriate to his contribution. In the long run, they will be able to attract more good people that way. They are taking the position, apparently, that short term profits is all that matters, which may be true financially but is a very sad commentary on the ability of free markets to produce quality products for the long haul. Long term quality gives more to society in the end, which is worth more than money, IMHO.
    • If you sign something, READ it. Even the fine print.
      While in general this is correct, it is not always possible or feasible. Picture someone who really needs a job. In the current economy this is far from unthinkable. You go out, interview, find a dream job (or just a job), get an offer, and then are presented with the paperwork. Do you sign it, become employed, be able to feed your family and or lifestyle? or do you pass because you don't like fine print? Do you really actually read the fine print? Probably not. Let's say you decide you need the job and are willing to overlook the fine print. Years later you discover something valuable. While I agree the company owns the invention due to their investment in you, I also believe that fair compensation for value received that is beyond expectation of the average employee is in order. It seems pretty simplistic to use the "read the fine print" argument. People don't always have such choices. People should not be penalized for making choices that they don't really have.

  • this would be OK if there was an alternative (Score:5, Insightful)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @10:10PM (#4301614)
    In principle, there is nothing wrong with doing research for a company and having the patents belong to them: they paid for the research, they paid the salary, they should get the rewards.

    However, in practice, there is a problem: it is very difficult for most inventors to file, and get the benefits of, patents on their own. That's because companies can do patents by economy of scale, and they can play all sorts of games with large patent portfolios. As an individual, you can't compete even if you have a great idea: you won't usually have the resources or the time to do what is practically necessary to take advantage of a patent. Even if you get a bunch of patents filed, it is likely that some big company is going to file a dozen related patents and involve you in endless patent disputes if you ever try to assrt your patents by yourself. And the patent system is really not set up to help the inventor personality--it is built on baroque language and endless paperwork: the kind of stuff lawyers love and engineers and scientists hate.

    In different words, I think the patent system today is skewed towards letting large companies keep out the little guys and individual inventors. And that's why inventors often don't have much of a choice but to work for a large company.

    (There are, of course, some notable exceptions.)

  • Nobody better have patented this before (Score:4, Funny)

    by thelinuxking ( 574760 ) on Friday September 20, 2002 @10:11PM (#4301619)
    I feel like patenting an "aqua" colored LED (Its not blue, ok? Its aqua!). To make it, I start with a plain, white LED. But then I take this magical TOP SECRET material and place it over the light.

    What? You mean someone already patented colored cellophane?

    • Re:Nobody better have patented this before (Score:5, Informative)

      by reitoei1971 ( 583076 ) <reitoei.gmx@net> on Friday September 20, 2002 @10:28PM (#4301672)
      This is a dumb technical issue but...

      There are no white LEDS. An LED emits a fairly small bandwidth of light, usually around 50nm, produced by passing current through various types of crystals(the crystal substance determines the color).
      LED cases are colored purely for convenience, making it simple to know what color you're using. There are "white" LEDS on the market which use a composite substance which is basically several LEDs of different color combining their light.
    • LOL...plain white LED. Don't you know what a white LED is?

      It's a blue LED. With fluorescent material inside the case that fills in the rest of the spectrum.

      Ever wonder why white LED's never showed up until after the blue LED was invented?
  • The only problem with the situation is that Nichia gives its other inventors little financial incentive to produce patents. Over time, this may result in Nichia producing fewer patents than its competetors, as its top inventors leave to join companies that reward inventors better. Also, the marketplace will respond in time and Nichia could end up losing far more than the 2 Billion that Professor Shuji Nakamura wants.
  • ...a cement that has been used as a standard adhesive for artificial joints for years. Thousands of people have been relieved of pain (including, ironically, my Dad who is about to get his second hip joint replaced)

    Did he become rich because of this?

    Nope.

    All the work was done at the University of Manchester who by tenureship regulations own all the patents on work done by professors.
  • is an idiot. He's the best man around in this field, and if you don't serve him right, he'll look for somebody who does. Even evil empire as we called it does repect their developers ("Developer! Developer! Developer!").

    A little bit straying away from the topic, but this explain why opensource is a huge success - the inovations come from the developers, inventors etc., not those who take the fruit of their labours and make money out of them.

    Only a few years ago I heard an PHB said "Open Source?! Blah! It's so foolish of them to give their work away for free! Without our marketing and sales their work worth nothing!" (this PHB still works for big blue)

  • Poor Scientist... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Perdo ( 151843 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @07:20AM (#4302567) Homepage Journal
    He will only get the $960,000 (10,000,000 swedish crown, 118,490,495 Yen) prize.

    His company may have screwed him but at least he'll get the prize money.

    Plus, a Nobel Prize looks pretty good on your resume after you ditch your dead beat employer.

  • Surely Nichia could have paid him the equivalent of a couple of million US in return for being quiet and going away. Before his breakthrough Nichia was a small chemical manufacturer specializing in phosphor compounds, afterward they became the world leader in blue, violet, and UV LEDs and laser diodes.

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