Big companies stealing inventors' ideas isn't news. But
lone inventors winning large judgments against those companies
is.
Historically, individual inventors don't sue major
corporations for one reason: They don't have deep enough
pockets to pay for protracted and expensive legal battles.
Litigation, of course, is expensive. But suing a big company for
patent infringement or misappropriation of trade secrets is a
veritable wallet-buster. Cases drag on for years. Hundreds, if not
thousands, of hours are spent in discovery, resulting in mountains
of paper. According to the AIPLA, litigation costs in a patent
infringement suit, from discovery through appeal, can range from
$793,000 to about $2.5 million.
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That's exactly what Ron Chasteen was facing when it came
time to sue for his patent. But the inventor was willing to take
the risk. It took Chasteen and his partner, John Balch, several
years, a lot of money and five different law firms before they
found one that agreed to take the case on a contingent-fee basis.
"They were all happy to just take our money with no end in
sight," Chasteen says. "We got nowhere--just a lot of
bills."
Chasteen is one of a growing number of lucky inventors who,
thanks to increased contingent-fee litigation, where a law firm
gets paid only if its client wins, now have the opportunity to go
after corporate giants and win sizable judgments.
"Contingent-fee litigation is for individual inventors and
small- to medium-size businesses who would have trouble affording
normal patent or trade-secret litigation," explains Joe
Hosteny, a partner in the Chicago law firm of Niro, Scavone, Haller
& Niro, which has tried and won several patent and trade-secret
cases, including Chasteen's. "Without con-tingent-fee
litigation, big corporations could steal solo inventors' ideas
with no one to stop them."
Chasteen was awarded his patent for a fuel-injection system for
snowmobiles in the late 1980s. He and his partner approached
Polaris Industries of Roseau, Minnesota, about a deal. "When
we first met with their head engineer, he told us we had made a
massive leap in technology," says Chasteen, 47. Initially,
Polaris wanted to buy Chasteen's system outright. But the
inventor didn't want to sell. Eventually a deal was struck, and
Polaris agreed to buy the systems from Chasteen. After about a year
of development, Polaris pulled the plug, claiming it was going to
hold off on selling fuel-injected snowmobiles.
Chasteen was dumbfounded when, a short time later, Polaris
introduced a fuel-injected snowmobile. He immediately bought one
and tore it apart...and found it used the very tech-nology he had
developed. "We were furious," Chasteen says.
"They'd simply cloned ours." Chasteen decided to sue
Polaris as well as Fuji Heavy Industries, which was supplying
Polaris with the fuel-injection system.
After almost 11 years, Chasteen finally got the justice--$70
million worth of it--he deserved. And his isn't an isolated
case. "We're seeing more law firms taking on
patent-infringement contingent-fee cases," explains Meg
Boulware, an intellectual property attorney and a former president
of the Alexandria, Virginia-based American Intellectual Property
Law Association (AIPLA). "It's a function of strong patent
law, increased awareness of intellectual property and more firms
with enough resources to take [these cases] on."
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