Mac_H

So to summarise what appears to be the case from your court filings :

1. You patented a night-vision system that beamsplit light into separate sensors and then merged them together in a single display. This is US Patent#6,911,652. It was filed Feb 20, 2003 and has a priority date of Mar 22, 2000

2. There was an earlier patent (a decade before) that covered many of the same things - US Patent#5,035,472, etc .

3. There are other papers around the techniques. This one, for example. In general, the technique is called 'Fused Night Vision Technology' .

4. After a court case, it was determined that most of the claims in your patent ('652) were duplicates of the earlier patents .. the only thing that survived your patents is the mention of different levels of control for brightness, contrast etc eg: (Claim 4: ... wherein said thermal image adjustment assembly and said photon image adjustment assembly are structured to be independently and separately adjusted relative to one another.)

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To quote the court results : "the claims of the ’652 patent that describe independent adjustment of the brightness of the image intensifier and thermal imager [remain]"

In other words ... you invented something independently and was pretty damned proud of your invention. As you should be. Getting stuff out there in people's hands is a lot harder than simply filing paperwork on it.

Now you feel shattered to find that someone else had invented it first ... leaving only the brightness knobs as the difference.

But isn't the kind of thing that normally gets sneered at?

I have a patent to cover an existing technique ... but this patent mentions independant brightness knobs so you must pay me !

I know .. it doesn't fit in with 'David .v. Goliath' story. But this is how it looks like to an outsider ...

Q: Do you feel that, now that the patent has been tested in court, that it is anything more than a brightness knob on an existing product?

Also - a plea. Keep your lawyer under control.

For a start, they keep making statements that don't appear (to a simple viewing of the court findings) be entirely understandable.

eg: "The government's incredulous claim, that some government employee named Hansen invented a fused goggle ten years before Mr. Walkenstein, was summarily rejected by the United States Court of Claims."

Yet, when I read the court findings, it seems that the court did NOT reject the claim. In fact, that was exactly why your claim#1 in your patent was rejected. The court DID find that Hanson's patent covered fused goggles.

I know - that's probably an edited form of what your lawyer intended to say. But it doesn't lend credibility to your argument.

And I've noticed that your lawyer has a tendency to threaten to sue those who comment publicly on the court case. This apparently straight forward article got a letter from your laywer.

Can you promise that your lawyer won't threaten to sue any of us for our comments on this AMA? )

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(PS: I'm sure 'brightness knob' is a simplification of the remaining part of your patent. But the judge summarised it as 'independent adjustment of the brightness', so it seems fair enough for a casual discussion on the topic)

You mentioned a couple of things that I'm curious about.

• You talked about how if necessary to save a life then it would be acceptable to have the hijab removed. What about practical issues? For example - in my area I regularly (about once every week or two) see someone wearing a full burqa. What considerations should be given for people wearing full masks like that - especially when walking into banks where security will lockdown the bank if you approach wearing a balaklava? There was an interesting example recently where someone in a burqa gave a statement to police over an incident and the police didn't forcibly remove the burqa out of respect. However when the statement proved to be false she avoided criminal conviction by pointing out that it couldn't be proved that she was the one who gave the false statements - as nobody had removed her burqa to prove who it was who lied to police.
  

How should society adapt to cope with this? Should women in burqas be forced to give fingerprints or other forms of ID when entering banks or shops? Should they be treated any differently from someone who walks in wearing a balaclava? Should they be forbidden from taking part in every day society?

• You often answered about how we should just walk up to someone and ask them directly. Is that seriously a good idea?

I feel (probably totally wrongly) that if I just walked up to a woman in a full burqa and asked her these questions that I'd be acting incorrectly. One option would be to instead ask the male who always seems to be with them ... but obviously I would never be so insultingly sexist as to direct my questions to someone else when they are right there - that would be disgusting behaviour .. only fit for a lowlife who refuses to see women as equals.

So who should I ask? Should I just follow your advice next time and walk up to one , introduce myself, and ask them directly? Can I give them your details if it causes offense ?

Hansen did not teach independent adjustment, PERIOD.

I'm not claiming he did. But that means that we are in entire agreement:

The difference between your patent and Hansen's patent a decade before is that you have an independent brightness control, and Hansen didn't.

I produced functioning systems that were put in the field with real operators while everyone was promising if they got more money they could also deliver...eventually.

Agreed. I have real sympathy for you there. But patent law doesn't work that way.

Being the first to market is a different thing to being able to stop competitors with your patent.

I agree entirely. There are some great examples where lawyers have ended up with massive reprimands for not forbidding their clients from speaking publicly on the case while it is in progress.

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The thing that's missing, though, is that from another angle I'm entirely on his side.

He put the hard work to create a working product. But the only customer that he's interested in selling the product to is the US government - which is just going to buy the product from the lowest bidder.

He has no real intellectual property on the product ... most of the patent didn't hold up to scrutiny, and the only thing left is this brightness control on it as protectable.

But all the hard work he put into it wasn't in the patentable stuff .. it was the million other bits that need to be done to make a real working product.

So he's stuck ... as long as he chooses to only sell to the US government. But there are a hundred OTHER customers out there who are still in the market (UK, France, Singapore etc) . But he chooses not to sell to those because he's a big believer in that one customer.