Battleangel

Slashdot brings us up to speed on the 15 year old Lucent Technologies & US government vs Philip French, Charles Monty and Steven Van Keiren.

Wired recently ran a story about a group of inventors that found themselves unable to sue Lucent Technologies for infringement of a patent they held on a novel design for a pipe/cable connector. They had been working with Lucent on an underwater application for this connector, but unfortunately for the inventors, Lucent’s application was being developed for an as-yet-unnamed branch of the U.S. government. The government is now claiming a state-secret privilege, and is refusing to let the inventors sue Lucent for patent infringement, citing national security concerns. In the meantime, Lucent continues to directly profit from their invention without paying any royalties or other compensation. The patent in question can be found online. It’s doubly a shame because, unlike so many other patents that we’ve seen here, this one is actually creative and non-obvious.

One of the three inventors in question, is for obvious reasons bitter and quoted as saying:

If it had been war time, World War II, I’d have given it to them. But if they’re hiding behind some friggin’ law, basically to screw somebody….

So the to inventors who are still left in the struggle are getting nowhere. So much for the great American Dream and its draconian IP laws. Gee, I thought these three would have been millionaires by now. I guess this wont be one for the propaganda pamphlets …

Eminent Domain btw is “the right of the state to take private property for public use” BUT “the Fifth Amendment requires that just compensation be made”.
In this case the compensation seems lacking, since the inventors and patent holders are now effectively prohibited from using the patent and their source of income from Lucent seems effectively drained. But it seems that when the US government and its pet corporations are involved, individual rights and American mythos are just thrown out the window. As much as I oppose the IP legislation, I do not support theft from higher up in the hierarchy of society. Citizen X stealing from corporation Y to form his own company is alright. Corporation Y stealing from citizen X is not good. And I can’t quite let go of the apparent contradiction of the US system. Of which personal achievement is a corner stone. I love to see them crumble under their own inconsistencies.