Let’s hope the Blackberry patent dispute doesn’t take this long to resolve!

by on December 20, 2005

News.com reports that after more than 25 years of battling with Sony Corp. and others in court, Andreas Pavel has finally won the right to say that he was the man who invented the Walkman.

What blew my mind away when I read this is that I can distinctly recall getting one of those very first Walkmen for an X-Mas gift back in the early 80s. What a hunk of junk it was. It only received FM radio, and didn’t even do a very good job of that. They got much better in subsequent years, of course, until they were finaly replaced by portable CD players and now iPods and MP3 players. But, amazingly, this entire time, this Andreas Pavel guy has been engaged in a patent dispute about a long-dead technology. Amazing. Hopefully the Blackberry dispute doesn’t take this long to settle!

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About Adam Thierer

Adam Thierer is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He previously served as President of The Progress & Freedom Foundation, as Director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, and as a Fellow in Economic Policy at the Heritage Foundation. He is the author or editor of six books on technology and media policy and also writes a weekly column for Forbes called "Technologies of Freedom." Thierer earned his bachelor's degree in political science and journalism at Indiana University and received his master's degree in international business management and trade theory at the University of Maryland. His passions in life (besides technology and liberty, of course) are fast cars, fine cigars, and good beer.

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