MUGGERS OF INVENTION

It's the ultimate sickener. A boffin toils away in his garden shed to come up with a world-beating gizmo, then the big boys steal it and make a mint. In most cases, justice is never done because few can afford the time and money it takes to sue a big business. However, a German who invented the portable music player secured a multi-million-euro pay-out from Japanese electrical giant, Sony. Andreas Pavel patented his "Stereobelt" in 1977, two years before the launch of the Sony Walkman.

Pavel is one of the few to get the better of a major corporation. Here are others who tried, with varying degrees of success:

ELECTROLUX BAGLESS VACUUM CLEANER
Inventor: John North
Compensation: £17million
John North won this huge pay-out just two weeks ago after he claimed the company "stole" his design for a vacuum cleaner. John, an engineer from Norwich, invented an upright, bagless vacuum cleaner but when he showed it to Electrolux, the company rejected it. Months later he saw a similar machine in an electrical store. When he took it apart, he realised it was identical to the design that had taken him 10 years to complete. He accused Electrolux of copying his invention without permission. John accepted the out-of-court settlement from the company after a four-year legal battle.

FM RADIO
Inventor: Edwin Armstrong
Compensation: £570,000
An American electrical engineer spent 21 years trying to create a static-free method of broadcasting but killed himself after a legal wrangle over his invention. Edwin Armstrong realised his dream in 1933 by inventing wideband frequency modulation, which we know as FM radio. But his friend David Sarnoff, chief executive of electrical company RCA, claimed his firm invented FM, and the court battle that followed drove Armstrong to take his own life in 1954 at the age of 64. A year later, Armstrong's estate settled with RCA, and went on to successfully sue 21 other companies for royalties.

JET-SKI
Inventor: Clayton Jacobson
Compensation: £12m
Clayton Jacobson came up with the idea for machine in the 60s, and the device evolved into its present form around 1970. Jacobson, of Parker, Arizona, was stunned when he saw an advert for Japanese firm Kawasaki claiming to be "the inventor of the Jet-Ski". In a rare legal move he sued Kawasaki for libel in 1991, saying the firm's patents in Japan and its advertising libelled his title to the invention. A US district court found against Kawasaki and two of its US subsidiaries in 1991 - and awarded $21m (£12m).

TELEVISION
Inventor: Philo Farnsworth
Compensation: Virtually nil
The Farnsworth story shows that being in the right doesn't always pay. Farnsworth, from Utah, was only 15 when he drew his "Image Dissector" on a blackboard. Years later, his chemistry teacher re-drew that sketch to help Farnsworth win a legal battle against David Sarnoff (yes, him again) of RCA. Farnsworth filed his first patent in January 1927 and transmitted the first TV picture, a postage-stamp-sized image of a glass slide with a line drawn on it. RCA started selling TVs, but when Farnsworth tried to collect revenue from the firm, Sarnoff told him: "RCA doesn't pay royalties; we collect them." He won his patent case against RCA in 1939, but it was a hollow victory because TV production was stopped during World War II. When the war ended, his patents had expired and his company collapsed - which led to a breakdown.

INTERMITTENT WINDSCREEN WIPER
Inventor: Robert Kearns
Compensation: £12m
Kearns, a 63-year-old inventor from Maryland showed his design for an intermittent windscreen wiper to car giants Chrysler and Ford. In 1962 he installed a set of the wipers on a Ford car and took it to the company, hoping the firm would buy his invention. Several meetings took place but no agreement was signed. So when he saw his design appearing in showrooms, with no payment to him from Ford, he took the company to court. After a 14-year battle, Kearns won his case in 1990 and was awarded £5.7m. In 1992 he won a case against Chrysler, which had to pay him compensation of £6.3m for using his invention without permission.

WATER BED
Inventor: Charlie Hall
Compensation: £2.7m
As part of a project for his master's degree in design, Charlie Hall, a 24-year-old student at San Francisco State University, built a water bed. When he came up with the idea in 1968, he had no idea it would make him so rich. Hall started making heated water beds at his Innerspace factory in Sausalito, California. He applied for a patent in 1969 and received it two years later. He said, "I didn't intend it to be a counterculture thing. And we really didn't market them with sex in mind. We marketed them as a better bed." But when he saw his design had been copied by other firms he took them to court. In 1991 he successfully sued Intex Plastics at a federal court in San Francisco for patent infringement and won $4.8m (£2.7m).

WHIFF-FREE URINAL
Inventor: Valerie McLean
Compensation: Undisclosed
Valerie McLean patented her WhiffAway, a waterless, odourless urinal, after researching the excessive use of water and noxious smells in urinals at hotels, restaurants and motorway services. A High Court judge ruled that within months of signing an exclusive agreement to distribute the system, Washroom International, began to develop a rival product, the IQ Waterfree Urinal System. Valerie, a widow from Stoke Poges, Bucks, spent more than £100,000 in legal costs, but she won her case in 1998. Mr Justice Astill dismissed a counterclaim for damages which alleged she had exaggerated the effectiveness of her invention to induce them to enter into the contract.

(Source: Daily Mirror)

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