Jan
27
2004Cognex Defeats Lemelson in Landmark Court Ruling
27
2004
Cognex, my previous company, just won a landmark case ruling against the Lemelson Foundation. The Lemelson Foundation, a supposed philanthropic organization earned its wealth almost entirely via “submarine patents”. Submarine patents are patents which are applied for, then slowly updated to reflect developments by others, over years or decades. When the technology in question becomes highly profitable, the patent holder sues the companies which have created the actual innovations — though the holder’s original patent was for something barely resembling the technology. This is what Lemelson tried to pull on Cognex, and if you’ve ever met Cognex’s CEO, Bob Shillman (and I have), you know he is not a guy to be messed with.
The story was on Slashdot yesterday. Pretty cool that a site I built got Slashdotted, albeit five years after I left. My whizbang Job Search page is still on there as I left it — built with the latest FrontPage/MS Access technology 