Today's Strib reported on a $100 million patent judgment against Medtronic in favor of a 55 year old inventor with hundreds of patents in the area of solving back problems. The issues were complicated, and surely Medtronic has something to say about why it proceeded as it did, but the striking part was the inventor saying that he would not return to inventing again, that the law suit had taken him out of the loop for too long. It struck me that this was the stuff of Greek tragedy: nobody won this one. Medtronic lost money, but also lost the future productivity of somebody really exceptional. The aging population lost who knows what help with back pain. And the inventor, likely, lost the work he really enjoyed. And everybody in the scenario, the lawyers, the executives, the inventor -- was behaving reasonably on some standard, but they couldn't see the trainwreck coming. We don't want to lose this notion of trainwrecks, in all the talk about responsibility and obligation and loyalty -- all of these particular moral pulls. We have to hold on to the very strong moral imperative to avoid, whatever else we do, the result that nobody wants.
Posted by shea0017 at September 29, 2004 4:49 PM