Edison in the Boardroom: How Leading Companies Realize Value from Their Intellectual Assets

NOTES

Introduction The Edison Prophecy

1. The Papers of Thomas Edison: The Wizard of Menlo Park, Ed. Paul B. Israel, Keith A. Nier, Louis Carlat (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 844–850. This entry appears in the journals of Francis Upton, recording (presumably faithfully) the words of Thomas Edison. The editors note that Edison “signed and dated these notes.” (See p. 850, note 1.) They also state that in this and surrounding passages, “Upton appears to be recording Edison's thoughts.” (See p. 852, note 20.)

2. The number of worldwide patents exceeds this number greatly. Non-U.S. patents passed the 6 million mark nearly 20 years ago: “The Scientific Library of the Patent Office contains… over 6,000,000 volumes of foreign patents in bound volumes,” quoted in “Patents, Law of,” Encyclopedia Americana (Grolier, 1982), p. 386.

3. Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Section 1ff., 14 U.S.C.A. 541.

4. Margaret M. Blair and Thomas A. Kochan; editors The New Relationship: Human Capital in the American Corporation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2001), p. 1.

5. As stated in note 1, this passage comes from The Papers of Thomas Edison.

6. From encyclopedia.com, under Edison, Thomas Alva.

7. This history is based on a variety of sources, including the Edison books cited in other notes to this chapter. The portion on Langmuir comes from Robert Buderi, Engines of Tomorrow: How the World's Greatest Companies Are Using Their Research Labs to Win the Future (New York: Simon & Schuster, ...