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Waymouth/Hellman
When Hellman and his group unveiled their inventions in 1976, they
assumed global use within five years. Stanford went ahead and patented
them. Meanwhile, after attending a seminar Hellman gave, he says,
faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology followed Stanford’s
work, formed a company and licensed their technology back from MIT.
Another
company licensed the Hellman group’s technology from Stanford. The two
firms waged a paralyzing patent war that lasted nearly two decades.
 Robert
Waymouth and Martin Hellman
“If the companies hadn’t battled each other and, rather, had agreed to
license and make it broadly available, both Stanford and MIT would
probably have gotten lots and lots of revenues,” says Katharine Ku,
director of Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing. “They totally
ruined both patents.”
Part of the problem was everyone’s miscalculation on just how long it
would take for the field to be ready for them. They were off by a
decade. New
industries had to be created around the technology before big money
could start rolling in. “It takes years to build infrastructure for a
whole new technology,” says Hellman. By the time
the field was ready 17 years later his patents had nearly
expired.
Hellman is philosophical about the fortune that might have been. “It
didn’t turn to gold,” he says. “It was a lost opportunity.” Fortunately,
only commercially. He and his colleagues have been showered with
professional awards for their contributions. And they have the
satisfaction of seeing technology they developed widely used.
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