🚀 go-pugleaf

Uncle Al <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message news:<40FDC0EF.CD548CAC@hate.spam.net>...
> Jeff Lanfield wrote:
> > 
> > I am writing a paper on how new ideas gain acceptance in science.
> 
> Reproducible empirical demonstration by despised and undeserving
> discoverers.  
> 
> Kary Mullis won a 1993 Nobel Prize subsequent to a boring
> late-night drive down Highway 128 to Anderson Valley (Mendocino
> County, CA) in April 1983.  Millis got a $10K bonus for his
> invention.  Cetus sold his PCR patent to Hoffman-LaRoche for
> $300,000,000.
> 
> I'd say a 0.0033% bonus was a bit slim, wouldn't you?  "despised
> and undeserving"
> 
 [---]

Heh-
I would have dreamed of such a bonus.
When I worked at a company that I won't name, but 
it rhymes with "sitting blank," we had to sign away all of 
our patentable work for $1 - Well, I wrangled a patent
or two (One in the U.S. and one in India)... And I 
never even got the frickin dollar.

AFAIK, when you're doing your job and  getting paid 
for it, any patentable works are solely the property 
of the employer because legally you are merely the 
agent of the employer, unless there are prior legally
provable agreements that were made, in which case the 
inventor is not and agent, but enters "contractee" 
status - guess how often THAT happens in corporate
America :-/.

So, you'll probably find you'll have a pretty 
big list of "despised discoverers"... at least 
monetarily - I'm guessing somewhere around a half
a million or so, maybe most of them actually living.

The only thing I personally have found that patent 
inventorship bestowed upon me as an agent of an 
employer is that of tenure - Hell, I know that does 
count for something, but you won't get rich off it,
obviously.

K.C