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February 26, 2005

obituary for the inventor of windshield wipers

A common story that intellectual property attorneys like to tell individual clients revolves around the inventor of intermittent windshield wipersWindshield Wipers and his campaign against the automotive industry for infringing upon his technology.  The story even ends positively – the inventor won a significant damages award against the automakers.  This David and Goliath story is what myths are made out of — unfortunately, the inventor passed away this past week.  Robert Kearns was 77.

Mr. Kearns exemplified the determinedness of the individual inventor – resourceful, dedicated and a dreamer.  The obituary is more of an adventure tale than a post-mortem of an individual’s life accomplishments — for example, during most of the infringement litigation, Mr. Kerans acted as his own attorney. 

The individual inventor: Fearless. Determined.  Stubborn. 

U.S. Patent No. 4,544,870
U.S. Patent No. 4,339,698

UPDATE 3/3/05 - After getting a comment from the son of Robert Kearns, I thought we should include the patent he mentioned 3,351,836, which I'm guessing was the "original." Thanks, Dennis Kearns for stopping by!



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Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 05:39 PM.
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Comments

This is one of the stupidist patents ever awarded... While the tale of the determined inventor can be related to. The fact is that this clearly Obvious patent should not have been awarded. Simple circits like software are obvious ideas which should not be able to have patent's slaped on them.

Posted by: Joel W at February 26, 2005 06:14 PM

Thanks for including mention of my dad and his inventions 3,351,836. Although many claimed this elegant invention was obvious, all juries, judges and appeals courts, found it VALID and INFRINGED. Going to the moon seems obvious NOW. It wasn't the week Kennedy was killed and this invention was conceived. Since 63 there hasn't been much improvement on what now is standard on all vehicles?

Before this suit, Ford had never paid more than 11 cents for any royalty, before we went to trial with Chrysler, they were paying more than $1.00 per unit.

Posted by: DennisK at March 2, 2005 10:02 PM

This invention is not that of windshield wipers; it is of a circuit for implementing electrically operated windshield wipers.

We are told everywhere else that the inventor of windshield wipers was Mary Anderson who had the idea on a trip from Birmingham, Alabama to New York City and patented the windshield wiper in 1905.

IPH

Posted by: Ian P. Hudson at May 25, 2006 03:24 PM