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Solo inventor Noel Atkinson's 10-year-plus saga reads like an old-fashioned
story of intrigue.
It all started in 1988 when the president of General Research of
Electronics (GRE), a Japanese corporation, approached Atkinson about developing
new scanner radios that would operate at higher speeds than any on the
market. The two entered into a written confidentiality agreement, stipulating
that Atkinson would disclose his ideas to GRE in strictest confidence.
Atkinson followed up by giving the president a document describing some
new radio features, along with a block diagram of a new radio.
A few months later they signed another agreement allowing GRE to
have a license for some - but not all - of Atkinson's ideas, in exchange
for paying him a royalty for every scanner made that used his ideas.
For some reason - then unknown to Atkinson - GRE suddenly broke
off all communication with him 1993. Then in 1994, the inventor saw radios
being sold by Tandy (and made by GRE) that used his unlicensed trade secrets.
To confirm his suspicions, he ordered service manuals for the radios,
which convinced him that the unlicensed features he had disclosed in
confidence to GRE were in those scanner radios now on the market.
This was a blatant violation of their agreement, and he had not been paid
a dime for his trade secrets. Atkinson decided to sue.
Following a three-year legal battle in which Atkinson was represented
by Joe Hosteny's firm, Niro, Scavone, Haller and Niro, Noel Atkinson was
finally paid $3 million for the unlawful use of his trade secrets.
According to intellectual property litigation attorney Joe Hosteny,
Noel Atkinson's victory is yet another victory for contingent fee litigation.
"The 'little guy' cannot afford to pay attorneys their hourly rates in
order to sue a big corporation. With contingent fee litigation, the
lawyer's interests are aligned with the client's, since the lawyer gets
paid only if the client wins." Hosteny points out that there are only
a handful of litigation attorneys nationwide who take intellectual property
cases on a contingent fee basis. "Only with this method of litigation
can the small inventor have an equal opportunity to get its day in court."
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