Posted on 04/17/2006 7:13:16 AM PDT by Panerai
My son once sent an idea to Lego and got a letter saying that they did not accept unsolicited ideas. He wasn't broken hearted. His suggestion was that they start a Pokemon line. A year later he noticed Megablocks has a Pokemon line. But, not Lego.
These days, saying "Do the same thing, but make it blue" is practically good enough to be considered novel.
When I was 15 I sent some jokes in to the Tonight Show. I got the same kind of letter back. I understood the reasoning, and didn't think anything more about... until that night, when I heard some jokes along the same lines as mine.
But when Jimmy Carter proposes that we could turn peanut oil into energy, how many different "nuts running the country" jokes do you think that would generate?
Another reason to dislike attornies ...
Another lazy parent misses an opportunity to educate/bolster their child.
But the thank you note would have become prima facie evidence of their stealing this girl's idea - and would have resulted in large payouts if and when they came out with the feature. The legal system caused this issue, not the Apple company, IMO.
Cue violin music.
Well, the folks from Blackberry have found that not to be quite true.
Um, the much-maligned Marie Antoinette didn't say that. It predated her by several decades.
"I think the girl should go through the process for no other reason than to learn about it."
Yep, let her parents pay for a patent search - or were you presuming that the government does this for free and that the taxpayer should cover the tab for her education on this ?
There's interesting new news on that. Apparently NTP found somebody who had implemented the idea of wireless email 10 years before their patent and effectively paid him not to talk about it for the duration of the trial.
I've been happily
Mac-free for many years now.
But, I will admit,
I do sometimes hear
the voices of the Sirens
enticing me back . . .
Seeing The Big Picture (Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Apple Computer)
Don't be such a wet blanket. Patent searches can be done for free in case you didn't know. There are several steps in the patent process that can basically stake your claim and cost very little. Still it is all part of that learning thing and can be fun and interesting for a kid. That is if you want to teach them something outside of the mind numbing public school system.
They do now. There are at least 5 customer-designed models in the latest Lego catalog.
* iPod nano <---buzz buzz buzz
* Fifth Generation iPod
There are any number of programs and widgets available to automate this process.
Are you my sibling?
To all you mac users who think a crash is only defined by a blue screen, the proper definition of a crash is if you lose your unsaved work due to a program freeze up.
I find it so laughable when I hear the people at work boasting about the new mac, "wow, its great. When a program crashes you can just close that program, you don't have to restart the program."
They are so taken in by Mac they actually think it is sufficient consulation to losing all their work that they only had to restart the program the crashed and not the whole machine.
"Lawyers are not about doing things. They're about telling their clients why they CAN'T do things."
Bingo.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.