In a list of the 10 oldest professions, inventors should surely have a place. They’ve been among us for centuries, coming up with ideas and turning them into objects, some of them welcome — the tea pot, shoes, eyeglasses — while others, such as the default ring of a cell phone, not so much.
Inventors thrive in Silicon Valley, including in Menlo Park, where James L. Fergason, the holder of some 130 U.S. patents and 500 foreign patents, recently received the 2006 Lemelson-MIT Prize in honor of his career as an inventor.
Mr. Fergason is best known for his invention of the liquid crystal display, that ubiquitous flat screen now found on many devices, including cell phones, iPods, laptop computers and flat-panel TVs, not to mention digital watches.
“You always have a lot of ideas,” Mr. Fergason told the Almanac in a recent interview from his pleasant backyard. “One of the things I do is try to get rid of the ideas that don’t go anywhere.”
Indeed, his use of a liquid crystal display on a digital watch in 1970 passed that test: It went somewhere. In 2003, 1.7 billion LCDs were made, said Mr. Fergason, yielding $40 billon in revenues for manufacturers and $200 billion for retailers.
This invention may make a great deal of money for some people, but Mr. Fergason has not and will not be among them. His patent rights expired in 1990, before the technology took off. On that day, he said, he wore a black armband to protest the 20-year term of patent rights, a term that is common throughout the developed world.
What royalties he did receive “provided an education for my children and a good living,” he said.
Mr. Fergason, now 72, lives in Menlo Park with his wife Dora. The couple have four grown children, all of whom have science backgrounds.
A rural start
The son of a farmer/postmaster and a teacher, Mr. Fergason was the youngest of four children and grew up in central Missouri in the 1930s and 1940s. For many years, their home had neither running water nor electricity, he said.He attended a one-room school and the family lived off the fruits of their land. In a foreshadowing of things to come, he did find time to experiment with rockets and chemicals, some of which he acquired at high school and some through his part-time job in a pharmacy, he said.
He won a partial scholarship to the University of Missouri, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics, and went to work for Westinghouse. Army service interrupted his career, but he profited by learning some “real rocket science” in training on Nike Ajax anti-aircraft missiles.
Returning to Westinghouse in 1956, he was invited to join the exclusive Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh, where he spent 10 years.
At Westinghouse, he was the first to use liquid crystals to measure temperature change. Two resulting products — a forehead thermometer and a “mood” ring that changes color depending on skin temperature — represent the range of uses of some of his ideas.
Mr. Fergason started five companies over his career, including Menlo Park-based Fergason Patent Properties LLC. Inventions to his credit include a high-technology welding helmet and smart windows that can become opaque with the flip of a switch.
An inventor’s trials
Inventors have long been important to the United States. Article 1 of the Constitution grants Congress the authority to “promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”Such rights led to rapid technological advances in the United States, outpacing other countries in the 18th and 19th centuries, said Mr. Fergason. But rights limitations, as applied to inventors, are a thorn in his side.
“I understand very well the reasons for (limited rights) being the case,” he said. “It’s a compromise. You don’t want to hold back progress. Those useful arts become part of everybody’s toolbox.” But, he added, “it takes a long time for some patents to reach maturity.”
Liquid crystal displays, for example, now generate billions of dollars in revenues and the technology has yet to peak, and Mr. Fergason has no residual rights.
“That’s why I look at these guys with copyrights with some jealousy,” he said. In 1790, a copyright lasted 14 years with one 14-year extension. Congress has since extended the term several times; in 1998, the term became the life of the author plus 70 years.
But even if patent rights lasted longer, turning an invention into money is no slam dunk. A head for business is critical, said Mr. Fergason, adding: “If you make the best thing on earth, it’s no matter how good it is if you only sell one.”
One way to sell more than one is by licensing an invention to a corporation. Mr. Fergason said he has been approached several times, sometimes with less than honorable intentions. Some corporations are “scrupulously honest,” while others apply muscle, as in: “I’m bigger than you and I can litigate you into the ground,” he said.
He has twice successfully defended patents in court and has had to deal with claims that his ideas were obvious, he said.
“Hindsight is always 100 percent better than foresight,” he noted. “That’s one of the things you’re always fighting. ‘Oh, that’s so simple,’ (they say). Well, it wasn’t so simple when we started.”
Inventors, he said, get a bad rap with labels such as “patent troll” — implying that inventors sit on ideas and pounce when someone tries to use them.
The recipe for a successful product includes research, repeated trials, and working knowledge, he said. “The thing that people don’t seem to understand is that invention is not free. There’s more to it than just the idea.
“I think the inventor has a real role to play, and you keep hearing that the inventor is anti-business and that sort of thing, and nothing could be further from the truth.”
