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"CBS Sunday Morning" does innovation

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

"CBS Sunday Morning" on 23 May 2010 had many scenes shot from San Simeon and many stories touching on innovation.

One story was about new sport airplanes, and featured the ICON A5 Amphibious Light Sport Airplane. The 100HP Rotax rotary engine powers the pusher prop (push prop as used by the Wright Brothers) and there is a patent pending on the propellor guard. COO Steen Strand, a Stanford graduate, has worked for IDEO, Lehman Brothers, in addition to engineering several startups ranging from skateboarding to healthcare.

One story was about refrigerators, and included General Electric's "Monitor" refrigerator, which used sulfur dioxide as a refrigerant (and was named because of its likeness to the USS Monitor of the Civil War). "Sunday Morning" did not talk about the Einstein-Szilard refrigerator patent, US 1,781,541. Relevant to issues of non-practicing entities, Einstein and Szilard, who were not in the refrigerator manufacture business, conveyed their patent rights to Electrolux.

Sunday Morning also had a segment on harmonicas, which touched on issues of trade secrets, in presenting the replaceable reed system of the B-radical.

And, yes, there was a reference to "Citizen Kane," which might relate both to copyright law and to privacy law.

On current refrigerator wars:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/10/refrigerator-patent-wars-heat-up.html

On Robert Barnett (Rita Braver's husband and University of Chicago 1971 law school grad):

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/lawlobbying/10343.html

The Sunday Morning story was on cufflinks, but Sunday Morning could easily do a story on Barnett which would illustrate how lawyers can invade the domain of literary agents. Of the cufflinks, one set was in the form of roulette wheels.

Full post as published by IPBiz on May 23, 2010 (boomark / email).