Robert Kearns

Robert W. Kearns (March 10, 1927–February 9, 2005) was the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper systems used on most automobiles from 1969 to the present.

Kearns won one of the best known patent infringement cases against a major corporation. Having invented and patented the intermittent windshield wiper mechanism, which was useful in light rain or mist, he tried to interest the "Big Three" auto makers in licensing the technology. They all rejected his proposal, yet began to install intermittent wipers in their cars beginning in 1969.

He sued Ford in 1978 and Chrysler in 1982 for patent infringement. The Ford case went to trial in 1990 and there were two trials. Ford lost, although the court said Ford's infringement was not deliberate, and Ford agreed to settle with Kearns monetarily for US$ 10.2 million with an agreement of no further appeals. The Chrysler verdict was decided in 1992. Eventually, the Chrysler court decision was challenged and went to the Supreme Court who ruled in 1995 against Chrysler's challenge and for Dr. Kearns. Chrysler was ordered to pay him US$ 18.7 million with interest. By 1995, after spending over US$ 10 million in legal fees [Ronspies, Jeff A., [http://www.jmripl.com/Publications/Vol4/Issue1/ronspies.pdf "Does David Need a New Sling? Small Entities Face a Costly Barrier to Patent Protection"] , 4 J. MARSHALL REV. INTELL. PROP. L. 184 (2004), The John Marshall Law School, Chicago. Cf. p.196.] and court battles reaching to the Supreme Court, he received approximately US$ 30 million in compensation for their "non-deliberate" patent infringement. [Associated Press, [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/26/obituaries/26kearns.html "Robert Kearns, 77, Inventor of Intermittent Wipers, Dies"] , New York Times obituary, February 26, 2005]

In 2005, Kearns died of brain cancer complicated by Alzheimer's disease. His story forms the basis of the 2008 film "Flash of Genius" starring Greg Kinnear as Dr. Kearns.

Early career

Kearns was born in Gary, Indiana but grew up near the large Ford plant in River Rouge, Michigan which was a working-class neighborhood of Detroit. His father worked for a steel company, the Great Lakes Steel Corporation.

As a young man, Kearns was a member of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the US CIA, during World War II. [ [http://www.osssociety.org/pdfs/oss_spring_05.pdf In Memoriam to Robert W. Kearns] , OSS Society Newsletter, Spring 2005, p.13: "Robert W. Kearns, 77, died in Baltimore on Feb. 9, 2005. He invented the adjustable windshield wiper for automobiles. During World War II he served with OSS."] [Schudel, Max, [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54564-2005Feb25.html "Accomplished, Frustrated Inventor Dies"] , Washington Post, Saturday, February 26, 2005, Page B01: "Earlier in life, Kearns had been a high school cross-country star, an outstanding violinist and a teenage intelligence officer in World War II. But from 1976, his sole focus in life was to battle the auto giants and reclaim his invention."] [ [http://www.namebase.org/xkas/Robert-W-Kearns.html Robert W. Kearns entry at NameBase] ] In the late 1990s, he served on the Board of Directors of the Veterans of the Office of Strategic Services and the General William J. Donovan Memorial Fund. [ [http://www.inventored.org/inventors/Kearns/employment.html Bob Kearns' Biography page] ]

He earned engineering degrees from University of Detroit and Wayne State University and a doctorate from Case Western Reserve University. [http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2005/02/25/005398.html "Robert Kearns, Inventor of Intermittent Windshield Wipers and Battled Car Companies, Dies at 77" AP News, February 25, 2005] ]

Intermittent wipers

It is reported that Kearns' inspiration stems from an incident on Kearns' wedding night in 1953, when an errant champagne cork shot into his left eye, which eventually went almost completely blind. Nearly a decade later, in 1963, Kearns was driving his Ford Galaxie through a light rain, and the constant movement of the wiper blades irritated his already troubled vision. He modeled his mechanism on the human eye, which automatically blinks every few seconds. [Wohleber, Curt, [http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2007/1/2007_1_6.shtml "The Windshield Wiper : Nonstop ones made drivers crazy. Inventing a solution did the same to Robert Kearns"] , American Heritage Invention and Technology, Summer 2007, Volume 23, Issue 1] However, Kearns is reported to have later dismissed this story of the inspiration as fictitious. [Johnson, Reed, [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/latinamerica/la-et-kearns3-2008oct03,0,7571251.story "Robert Kearns' flawed 'Genius' "] , AP / Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2008. Quoting the article about the cork and eye blinking inspiration: "When I asked him about that charming anecdote 15 years ago, Kearns quickly dismissed it as baloney".]

Auto industry's legal argument against the validity of the Kearns patent

The legal argument that the auto industry posed was that an invention is supposed to meet certain standards of originality and novelty. One of these is that it be "non-obvious." Ford had claimed that the patent was invalid because Kearns' intermittent windshield wiper system had no new concepts. Dr. Kearns argued that there was a new combination of parts which made it unique. [Burk, Dan L., and Lemley, Mark A., [http://www.jstor.org/stable/3202360 "Policy Levers in Patent Law"] , Virginia Law Review, Vol. 89, No. 7 (Nov., 2003), pp. 1575-1696. Cf. p.1590-1591 and note 42.] [Merges, Robert P., [http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=bclt "A Transactional View of Property Rights"] , Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, Year 2005 Paper 8. Cf. p.17 and note 37.]

RC (resistor-capacitor) relaxation oscillators of the sort used in the Kearns patent had existed for decades before Kearns filed for his patent. They appear in textbooks on basic electronics (such as powering a blinking neon light). Parallel windshield wiper technology was being worked on at the auto manufacturers and was released by Chrysler in 1955.Cf. Seabrook article in The New Yorker, 1993.]

Ford engineer Ted Daykin had been experimenting with windshield wipers in 1957, and was then asked to design an electric wiper motor since the standard wiper was driven by engine vacuum from the intake manifold. He was one of the engineers to see Dr. Kearns demonstrate his invention at Ford in 1963. Daykin claimed that he and his colleagues were working on a set of windshield wiper projects including a timing device. One of his colleagues designed a bimetallic timer for the wipers which didn't work very well and took too much time to heat up. Daykin has also said that the prior art leading up to Dr. Kearns had been the work of hundreds of engineers. [Cf. Seabrook, The New Yorker magazine, 1993. "Daykin shook his head. He said he had spent much of his last year at Ford helping to prepare for the Kearns case, and the experience had caused him to think a lot about the patent system. 'I think about all those Ford engineers I worked with developing wiper systems. Dozens of inventors—maybe a hundred—contributed to your intermittent windshield wiper. There were men from Trico, Magnetti Marelli, Rover, Prestolite, Delco, General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford. I don’t know who some of them were—nobody does. They were the real inventors of the intermittent windshield wiper, not Kearns'”.]

Family

Robert Kearns had two daughters, four sons and seven grandchildren at the time of his death, one of his sons has a daughter, that Kerns never met or even knew was alive, that son now lives in Waterford MI.

Other inventors in similar patent disputes

There were many other inventors who fought long battles to enforce their patents as Dr. Kearns did. These included Edwin Howard Armstrong, who battled over the invention of frequency modulation in radio broadcasting, and Gordon Gould, who had a thirty-year fight with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to obtain patents for the laser and related technologies and fought with laser manufacturers in court battles to enforce the patents he subsequently did obtain.

Patents

* [http://www.google.com/patents?id=_qVQAAAAEBAJ&dq=Robert+Kearns United States Patent 3,351,836] , Robert W. Kearns, Filing date: Dec 1, 1964, Issue date: Nov 1967, "Windshield Wiper System with Intermittent Operation"
* [http://www.google.com/patents?id=JF4TAAAAEBAJ&dq=Robert+Kearns United States Patent 3,602,790] . Robert W. Kearns, August 31, 1971. Filed October 18, 1967. "Intermittent Windshield Wiper System".
* [http://www.google.com/patents?id=EO8rAAAAEBAJ&dq=Robert+Kearns United States Patent 4,544,870] , Robert W. Kearns, Timothy B. Kearns, Filing date: Sep 7, 1982, Issue date: Oct 1, 1985, "Intermittent windshield wiper control system with improved motor speed"

Lawsuits and legal references

* Kearns v. Ford Motor Co., 203, U.S.P.Q. 884, 888 (E.D.Mich. 1978)
* Kearns v. Chrysler Corp., 32 F.3d 1541 (Fed. Cir. 1994)
* Kearns v. General Motors Corp., 152 F.3d 945 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (unpublished decision).

* ( [http://www.inventored.org/inventors/Kearns/lawsuits.html More lawsuits of Dr. Kearns] )

Notes

References

* Seabrook, John, [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1993/01/11/1993_01_11_038_TNY_CARDS_000363341 "The Flash of Genius: Bob Kearns and his patented windshield wiper have been winning millions of dollars in settlements from the auto industry, and forcing the issue of who owns an idea"] , The New Yorker, January 11, 1993
* Seabrook, John, "Flash of Genius And Other True Stories of Invention", St. Martin's Griffin, September 2008. ISBN 0-312-53572-4

Further reading

* Andrews, Edmund L., [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3DA1230F931A25756C0A966958260 "Patents : Are Disputes Too Complex For Juries?"] , The New York Times, May 12, 1990. About Dr. Kearns' case.
* Schudel, Matt, [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54564-2005Feb25.html "Accomplished, Frustrated Inventor Dies"] , Washington Post, Saturday, February 26, 2005; Page B01. Dr. Kearns' Obituary.

External links

* [http://www.inventored.org/inventors/Kearns/ Bob Kearn's Biography at InventorEd]