Who really invented Liquid Paper?

[Moonbear]

Exactly. Bell is acknowledge as the inventor of the original phone, just as Graham is the acknowledged inventor of White-Out.

Being the acknowledged inventor doesn't mean she was THE inventor. There certainly have been plenty of incidences where one person claims the invention of another as their own. That seems to be what chemistree is suggesting had happened.

Someone that comes along later and makes improvements cannot retroactively claim to be the original inventor if they were not actually involved in the original invention. That this chemist never tried to lay claim to a patent for a formula change in his own name makes me believe that he didn't have the legal right to do so. Even if he could claim a patent for the formula change, he still cannot claim to be the original inventor. He's just improved on the invention.

Or he never realized at the time it would turn out to be anything, so didn't make a fuss about it, and now facing retirement with less savings than anticipated, has begun to regret that decision back then. Or he's just enjoying telling tall tales. I'm not going to presume one way or another.

It seems that chemistree is confusing the possiblity of getting a patent on an improvement with being recognized as the original inventor.

From what has been posted so far, I'm not sure if the "improvement" was before or after the original patent was filed. Was the "improvement" essential to get it patented as something other than white paint and a nailpolish brush, or was it already patented but not selling well and he helped modify it to make it more marketable? The sequence of events would make a huge difference here, and I'm really confused from what's posted in this thread on what the claimed sequence of events is.

 

[Evo]

Did you read the history Jim posted? She appears to have made the original product 5 years before she recruited the chemist to help. There is no way he can claim to have been involved in inventing it.

The second question was if he modified it sufficiently to get it patented, as Ivan pointed out, the terms of his contract would determine if he could get credit for the patent, still that is not the same as inventing it.

The story goes that Graham came up with the idea for Liquid Paper when workers were painting the bank windows for the holiday season. When a mistake was made on the window decorations it was simply painted over with white paint. She began to use white, water-based tempera paint and a thin paintbrush to cover her typing errors and called it Mistake Out. Initially she kept her idea to herself (her boss never noticed the paint on his documents). “I tried to keep it a secret,” she said. “For five years I did just that, still, others found out about it.” She did not sell the first bottle of Mistake Out until 1956.

Ever resourceful, Graham recruited an office supplier, a school chemistry teacher and a friend from a paint company to help her perfect her product which was becoming increasingly popular. Her son Michael and his friends helped fill bottles of Mistake Out with the whiteout in the garage. Graham had a good product, and renamed it Liquid Paper in 1958, but it was certainly no overnight success. She continued to work in the bank, managing the business after hours, making batches in her kitchen, packing and distributing from the garage.

http://www.liquidpaper.com/main.taf?p=4,1

another history posted previously http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/nesmith.html

and http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventions/a/liquid_paper.htm

I have asked chemistree if he has any proof that the hsitory of white-out is false and can back up his claim. If he could, that would be interesting. As it stands, it's a rather dead horse.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Getting one's name on the patent as the inventor is important even if the rights belong to the company that the inventor works for. It's a big boost for his future employment even if he doesn't get any money from the invention itself.

This is not an issue in our case as the company has promised to pay us $1 for the assignment. We don't yet know if this means a single dollar for the three of us to share in which case there may be some ugliness about that odd penny. Or each of us will get our own dollar. It doesn't matter much since we have to go to headquarters in NYC to get the money and that means travel through enemy territory. I'm told the swamp gas in North Jersey kills people in Connecticut. I told the CEO that my name on the patent would make it easy to get my next job, and he agreed.

 

[Gokul43201]

The story as he told it was that Bette showed up at his office with a can of flat wall paint and an empty fingernail polish bottle and said that she needed help.

In my legally untrained opinion, going from that to white-out is more than just "making improvements".

 

[Evo]

In my legally untrained opinion, going from that to white-out is more than just "making improvements".

But we have nothing in writing confirming that was the way it was. I remember an early history on her cooking up the stuff on the stove, she had started with tempera paint then adding things to make it more opaque and match the paper better.

I don't doubt the chemist made major improvements, he just can't be called the inventor.

You know that white stuff you paint on paper to cover mistakes? It was originally called "mistake out" and was the invention of Bette Nesmith Graham, a divorcee who went to work in 1951 to support herself and her son.


Though she found work as a typist, she unfortunately wasn't a very good one and developed a white tempura paint to hide her mistakes. Using her kitchen and garage as laboratory and factory, she gradually developed a product that other secretaries and office workers began to buy. While continuing to work as a secretary, she educated herself in business methods, promotion, and research until she was satisfied that the product she had developed was really worthwhile. She then offered Mistake Out to IBM which turned it down.

Undaunted, Bette Graham changed the name from Mistake Out to Liquid Paper and kept selling it from her kitchen-garage for the next 17 years. By 1968 she was making a profit. And in 1979, the Gillette Corporation bought Liquid Paper for $47.5 million plus royalties. She was also the mother of Michael Nesmith, a member of The Monkees.

http://www2.nemcc.edu/IR/Dial_e_for_Learning_Handout_8-13-03.htm

 

[Moonbear]

This is not an issue in our case as the company has promised to pay us $1 for the assignment. We don't yet know if this means a single dollar for the three of us to share in which case there may be some ugliness about that odd penny. Or each of us will get our own dollar. It doesn't matter much since we have to go to headquarters in NYC to get the money and that means travel through enemy territory. I'm told the swamp gas in North Jersey kills people in Connecticut. I told the CEO that my name on the patent would make it easy to get my next job, and he agreed.

And how much does the gas money and tolls add up to nowadays to collect your $1 (each or collectively)?

 

[Moonbear]

Well, I don't know what the truth is about who contributed most to the product ultimately patented and marketed (every source seems to gloss over that part), but after reading this book chapter about her, I admire her spunk.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WS...eZn&sig=7z3AVffrTsdbkX7puHHgCPVcx-w#PPA244,M1

Note the reason she sold the company to Gillette. (Next to last paragraph on p. 244.)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I hope there is no confusion concerning the difference between the inventor and the 'owner' of a patent. I am about to get a patent myself along with two colleagues. We are all employed under a 'work for hire' agreement. Although the company owns our work, the company is not mentioned as an inventor, only we three. Just yesterday we signed the assignment document. The patent office recognizes this as an agreement by the inventor(s) that someone else (the assignee) owns the rights to the patent.

Did the idea originate with you or was it given to you to develop?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There is another idea here. I don't know the current language or legality, but there is [or was] the idea of a pioneering patent, that effectively includes the concept as a part of the patent. This is only done for radically new ideas. One of my customers had a patent like for a magnetic drive for which they were entitled to some percentage of ownership in spite of future changes and improvements made by other companies. I would imagine that this applied to the first telephone and perhaps to the first mistake-out.

Normally, if one can modify an existing product by something like 10%, one can apply for a new patent or at least ignore the existing one.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Did the idea originate with you or was it given to you to develop?

The invention really took all three of us. The idea came from one, the application to a particular area took another and the implementation a third (me). I relate this to the liquid paper case. Graham had the idea and the application, the chemist had the implementation (if he is to be believed). I didn't find out that the patent application had been made until sometime after it happened. To be sure, I don't feel as thrilled about this as I would if it was my idea. My colleague who had the idea probably could have implemented it himself if he had the time to learn the tools, but I was available right away and he knew I had experience in such things. If my name had been left off of the patent, I would never have imagined that I was cheated.

We don't work in a skunkworks environment where ideas can be pursued without suits getting involved, but the idea man does have some slack in his job description. The reason the idea came to be is that we had been tasked with looking at some documents and to come up with ways to organize them. I had made some progress in presenting the documents in a reasonable way, and the idea man kept asking me for changes for improving the usefulness of the presentation. I would say it was 50-50 as far as the ideas that were flowing at that time. However, it was he who had the big break-through idea that is the basis of the patent.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, I don't know what the truth is about who contributed most to the product ...

The objective history of the contributors seems always to be much more complex than the popular nutshell version. We see this all the time here: who was really most responsible for Relativity? Who really invented the radio?

We tend to experience history as stories in the same way we experience novels or movies and want for there to be a clear cut protagonist with which to ally ourselves emotionally.

 

[chemisttree]

She may have had the product idea, but it's possible the chemist actually made it happen. Though, as Ivan points out, if he did it under contract to her, and the contract specified patent rights, then he has no claim on it. On the other hand, if there was no stipulation of that sort, he could potentially claim inventorship if he has the records to prove it (and the contract might even help prove it), and sue...how strong his case is would determine if he could win or not (and how deep his pockets...he'd be battling some very well-established companies with some of the best patent lawyers at their beck and call).

AHAA! Moonbear has hit it on the head. The contract signed would have assigned all rights of any potential patent to her. He told the story that she was using off the shelf paint in an empty fingernail polish bottle and it kind of worked, but not good enough.

He had no claim on the patent rights or any of the profit it generated. He never indicated to me that he was bothered by that in the slightest. We used to use that example as a selling tool for our services... and it worked!

 

[chemisttree]

Remembering an old friend

Thinking of you, Bill.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/02/tech/main517290.shtml

I really miss Bill... and you would too if you knew him. He had a beautiful baritone voice and was always upbeat. He sang in the San Antonio Mastersingers for years and played the violin. He would have been a concert violinist but other demands intervened. He played the violin up until the time he injured his hands in a lab fire beating the flames out for a colleague. To me he was larger than life but still a good friend. His many technical accomplishments didn't really define him as much as his attitude and his winning ways. His favorite song was "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and he didn't know why. He knew it was kind of a goofy song but he just couldn't get it out of his head.

I have a voicemail from him just before he fell ill that I still have on my phone. I just can't seem to erase it...

And now you know the rest of the story.

 

[zoobyshoe]

So, why did she need the help? What was the problem that he solved, and did it constitute a sine qua non?

 

[chemisttree]

The paint dissolved the type ink and produced a dark correction that was unsightly. It had to be corrected twice to make it look nice. And it took too long to dry. Bill bought every brand of typewriter ribbon sold around the world and found a solvent that wouldn't dissolve the ink on any of them. Then he formulated the paint around that solvent.

Of course, that is a new composition of matter and was therefore quite patentable.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The paint dissolved the type ink and produced a dark correction that was unsightly. It had to be corrected twice to make it look nice. And it took too long to dry. Bill bought every brand of typewriter ribbon sold around the world and found a solvent that wouldn't dissolve the ink on any of them. Then he formulated the paint around that solvent.

Of course, that is a new composition of matter and was therefore quite patentable.

Fascinating. He sounds like a very dedicated and intelligent problem solver.

 

[chemisttree]

He always had a jar of M&Ms in his office (provided gratis on a regular basis by a grateful company) that he handed out to everyone that came by. We also got free samples of clumping kitty litter from another company for 'quality control' purposes. It always seemed to clump.

 

[BobG]

He always had a jar of M&Ms in his office (provided gratis on a regular basis by a grateful company) that he handed out to everyone that came by. We also got free samples of clumping kitty litter from another company for 'quality control' purposes. It always seemed to clump.

It's hard to say anything but good things about anyone from Akron that likes "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", but this last post bothers me.

You know it clumped because ... I mean, you did test it with your pets, right? Hmm, Ivan's thread about the fly in the urinal, followed by Chemistree's post about the inventer of clumping cat litter...

 

[zoobyshoe]

It's hard to say anything but good things about anyone from Akron that likes "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", but this last post bothers me.

You know it clumped because ... I mean, you did test it with your pets, right? Hmm, Ivan's thread about the fly in the urinal, followed by Chemistree's post about the inventer of clumping cat litter...

OMG! You're not suggesting...!

 

[chemisttree]

ZZIIIPPPP! I'm all done here...


Cares of the past are behind
Nowhere to go but I'll find
Just where the trail will wind
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Just yesterday we signed the assignment document.

Things are going swimmingly. The patent has been 'allowed' by the USPTO. The next step is to pay the patent issue fee. This should take place before May 29. Then it is expected that the patent will be issued about three months after the payment. The application was made in July, 2003.

 

[GCT]

He always had a jar of M&Ms in his office (provided gratis on a regular basis by a grateful company) that he handed out to everyone that came by. We also got free samples of clumping kitty litter from another company for 'quality control' purposes. It always seemed to clump.

Southwest Research Institute - so were you guys collegues?

 

[chemisttree]

Southwest Research Institute - so were you guys collegues?

My office was right next door to him. I miss the M&M's too.

 

[GCT]

That makes more sense - from the discussions so far it sounded as if you were an avant admirer rather than a close colleague. You must have learned a lot from working with such a talented scientist.

My condolences...

 

[chemisttree]

Things are going swimmingly. The patent has been 'allowed' by the USPTO. The next step is to pay the patent issue fee. This should take place before May 29. Then it is expected that the patent will be issued about three months after the payment. The application was made in July, 2003.

Congratulations, Jimmy! Five years is a little long to wait but it isn't unheard of. There must have been a lot of back and forth between your lawyers and the USPTO examiner. My most recent patent atty. likes to draw out the process (and increase her billing). I wonder how long my next atty. will take...

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Congratulations, Jimmy! Five years is a little long to wait but it isn't unheard of. There must have been a lot of back and forth between your lawyers and the USPTO examiner. My most recent patent atty. likes to draw out the process (and increase her billing). I wonder how long my next atty. will take...

Thanks. The reason this took so long is that the main idea had already been patented in Australia. So even though our idea was original, we weren't the first to have this original idea. We made more than 120 claims, of which only a little less than 50 survived the process. A claim is like this: if you invented the teacup, you could claim it can be used for coffee too. If you don't make the claim, someone else can. And that is why we got the patent, we claimed things that they didn't.

 

[Moonbear]

Congratulations, Jimmy! Five years is a little long to wait but it isn't unheard of. There must have been a lot of back and forth between your lawyers and the USPTO examiner. My most recent patent atty. likes to draw out the process (and increase her billing). I wonder how long my next atty. will take...

My boyfriend is a patent atty, and from all his grumbling, it's the examiners that draw things out. On the other hand, he says that if a patent goes through too easily, you know you've done something wrong...like make the claims so narrow that they offer virtually no protection at all. It's sort of like a game of the Price is Right...you want to get as close as you can to the other patents without going over.

 

[chemisttree]

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...,419,942.PN.&OS=PN/7,419,942&RS=PN/7,419,942"

 

[out of whack]

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...,419,942.PN.&OS=PN/7,419,942&RS=PN/7,419,942"

I want to see YouTube clips of this used on a raucous crowd. It should be a riot!

 

[tribdog]

I would say it was 50-50 as far as the ideas that were flowing at that time. However, it was he who had the big break-through idea that is the basis of the patent.

so it was 50-50 between you three inventors? you are going to have a hard time splitting that dollar.