Robert William Kearns (March 10, 1927 – February 9, 2005) was an American inventor who invented the intermittent windshield wiper systems used on most automobiles from 1969 to the present. His first patent for the invention was filed on December 1, 1964.
Kearns won one of the best known patent infringement cases against Ford Motor Company (1978–1990) and a case against Chrysler Corporation (1982–1992). Having invented and patented the intermittent windshield wiper mechanism, which was useful in light rain or mist, he tried to interest the "Big Three" auto makers in licensing the technology. They all rejected his proposal, yet began to install intermittent wipers in their cars, beginning in 1969.
In a former life, I considered seeking a patent on an idea I had. My attorney informed me that a patent does not guarantee one’s exclusive right to an idea or unique device. It merely grants one the right to DEFEND his exclusive rights to that idea in court.....against the hoards of infringers that will pop up all over the place, if your idea is a good one. I decided not to pursue it. A steam-powered yoyo probably wouldn’t have caught on, anyhow.
Robert William Kearns (March 10, 1927 – February 9, 2005) was an American inventor who invented the intermittent windshield wiper systems used on most automobiles from 1969 to the present. His first patent for the invention was filed on December 1, 1964.I'm well aware of those facts.
My point was to show how silly Biden's statement is. Anyone can say they thought of anything, at any time.
Unless they took some unambiguous action as a result of their thought process, like writing it down, or telling someone, or (in the case of the windshield wiper invention) making a model, getting an invention notebook signed by a witness, filing for a patent, etc., there is no way to verify or prove what someone thought at a certain time.
I used the windshield-wiper invention because it is one that I know many people claimed to have invented, including my old boss (born in the 1920s, like Robert Kearns), and another elderly engineer I once met.
The intermittent windshield wiper seems to me to be one of the most widely invented inventions of all time.
Although having an idea for something and being the legal "inventor," in the sense of being issued a patent by the USPTO, are two different things.
This distinction was forced into law by the famous Lemelson patent case.
Jerome Lemelson was a guy who thought up hundreds of ideas with no intention of reducing them to practice. He then patented them, and waited until someone actually created a physical embodiment of the invention and put it on the market; that is when Lemelson appeared, demanding a royalty.
He became extremely wealthy as a result.
Some of his big successes included bar coding (which he described in a patent but did not actually reduce to practice) as well as several patents pertaining to machine vision (that is, the use of a computer to interpret images generated by a camera, such as a video camera). This is the field in which I make my living, and as a holder of several machine vision patents I am acutely aware of Lemelson and the mark he made on the field of patent law.