I'm not sure what either of you are attempting to demonstrate with these excerpts.
I read the fact that he didn't patent the 555 with some disappointment. He had a successful career, good; and yet, he deserved to capture some of the marginal product of his labor, not simply to go on to be promoted super-Executive-Senior-Engineer-Level-XII. In this case, he did later start and sell a company after he left Signetics, and his reputation from the 555 timer surely helped him to success in that.
But to my mind not patenting the design clearly made it harder for him to partake in the direct rewards he deserved for creating such a useful circuit.
Those excerpts demonstrate that the 555 timer became significant in part because it was not patented. You could even argue that Camenzind wouldn't have been eulogized for his invention of the 555 timer if it wasn't for its success due to widespread copying.
That would be a specious and incredibly naive argument. First A (unpatented invention), then B (success), ergo A causes B -- is that the proposal here? Wouldn't I just have to show the existence of only one invention which became popular, despite being patented, to disprove this? (If I didn't reject it on the grounds that it is fallacious reasoning)
Yes, you could argue that he would not have been eulogized, but you would need to have a better argument and it would be speculative at best.
No, you're right, it's a specious argument. While digging for data to back it up, I found this interesting quote from Camenzind:
There are no patents on the 555. Signetics did not
want to apply for a patent. You see, the situation
with patents in Silicon Valley in 1970 was entirely
different than it is now. Everybody was stealing
from everybody else. I designed the 555 Signetics
produced it, and six months, or before a year later,
National had it, Fairchild had it, and nobody paid
any attention to patents. The people at Signetics
told me they didn’t want to apply for a patent,
because what would happen if they tried to enforce
that patent, is the people from Fairchild would come
back with a Manhattan-sized telephone book and say
“These are our patents, now let’s see what you’re
violating”. It was a house of cards – if you blew
on it, the whole thing collapsed.[1]
That's strong evidence that the lack of patent for the 555 was unrelated to its particular success, so I admit I was wrong about that. But if Camenzind is correct in his history, then it sounds like Silicon Valley had a solution 40 years ago to the patent mess: pretend they don't exist!
There was an interesting bit of industrial espionage intrigue around the 555, a story he told friends and family many times.
As he mentions in his book "Designing Analog Chips" he was at one point stuck on a design that required 9 pins, and that forced it into a 14 pin package. He initially submitted this design to Signetics and it was this design that someone in the company leaked to a competitor.
But the larger package bugged him and he kept at it until he was able to get it down to 8 pins which allowed an 8-pin package, much preferable over a 14 pin one. The competitors, unaware of the improved design, came out with the larger 14-pin package and this gave Signetics a significant edge when they started selling the 555.
>sounds like Silicon Valley had a solution 40 years ago to the patent mess: pretend they don't exist!
No they had a solution and it was MAD.
>The people at Signetics
told me they didn’t want to apply for a patent,
because what would happen if they tried to enforce
that patent, is the people from Fairchild would come
back with a Manhattan-sized telephone book and say
“These are our patents, now let’s see what you’re
violating”.
And it worked really well for a time. Unfortunately someone thought they could win and decided to "go nuclear" and now we're all stuck in the middle of a patent war.
Since when is non-existence a cause? I think you need to re-phrase this a bit. The simultaneity of non-existence is precisely not a cause. The fact that they are independent (statistically) is perhaps more interesting. Certainly from a public policy perspective.
The decision not to patent can be a cause. But other accounts in this thread suggests that patenting or not would have had little influence in the environment in the Silicon Valley.
Probably wouldn't have amounted to much, though. If Signetics had patented it, purchasing it from him, he would have gotten what, maybe a few hundred dollars? That's about what most engineers receive for their patents from the employing company.
Now, if he had left Signetics and founded another company to create the 555, then he might have been rolling in dough.
But instead he created a company that pioneered the concept of semi-custom integrated circuits, and rolled in the dough. :) I think the mentality that he was somehow cheated out of something would have been seriously lost on him. He did what he did because he loved it and the money was secondary.
Hans took on the 555 timer project after he had already started his own business and did it on contract. The contract helped him survive (with a wife and 4 young kids) while he built his business.
I never once heard him comment on disappointment about not getting royalties on the 555 timer, in fact, I never once heard him mention anything about royalties on any of the work he did for other companies during the 60's and early 70's. I don't think it was in the mentality of era. In the time since then, the success and popularity of the 555 timer was enough of a reward for him.
It definitely led to less rewards for him, but increased rewards for society. I wouldn't expect any for-profit business to be more concerned about society, though, strange that it wasn't patented.
I read the fact that he didn't patent the 555 with some disappointment. He had a successful career, good; and yet, he deserved to capture some of the marginal product of his labor, not simply to go on to be promoted super-Executive-Senior-Engineer-Level-XII. In this case, he did later start and sell a company after he left Signetics, and his reputation from the 555 timer surely helped him to success in that.
But to my mind not patenting the design clearly made it harder for him to partake in the direct rewards he deserved for creating such a useful circuit.