Jury Finds Ford Violated Windshield Wiper Patent
DETROIT — A jury verdict that Ford Motor Co. violated patent rights on intermittent windshield wipers held by a former university professor could affect most major auto makers around the world.
Robert W. Kearns, a former professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, won his patent infringement suit against Ford on Monday in federal court.
He has filed similar suits against General Motors Corp., Chrysler Corp., Daimler-Benz, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and 21 other companies. The Ford case was the first to go to trial.
Kearns said in his 12-year-old lawsuit that his version of intermittent windshield wipers was unique because of a certain combination of parts. Ford denied that.
An eight-member jury sided with Kearns after a week of deliberations. The jury reconvenes Feb. 26 to set damages.
Although his suit doesn’t specify damages, Kearns has said he is seeking $50 for every Ford car built with intermittent wipers. Although the exact number of such cars isn’t known, Ford has sold at least a million cars a year with the device since 1982. Intermittent wipers allow the driver to set the intervals at which the blades sweep across the windshield.
U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn ruled earlier that Kearns failed to prove that he could have made and marketed the system on his own and thus can claim only a royalty on each wiper, instead of Ford’s profit.
Cohn barred Kearns and Ford officials from talking about the case.
Other auto makers said they were studying the verdict, but they declined to comment further.
“Our people need to look at the details of this Ford verdict before we can really comment much further,” said Honda North America Inc. spokesman Kurt Antonius. “Our litigation is in the very early stages.”
“There are some differences in the technical and legal aspects of our case and Ford’s,” said GM spokesman Don Postma. “Because the subject is in litigation we will refrain from further comment.”
Chrysler spokesman Lee Sechler said the nation’s No. 3 auto maker would not comment.
Kearns said in his lawsuit against Ford that he installed a set of his wipers on a 1962 Ford car and took it to the auto maker.
Kearns “made numerous disclosures of confidential engineering test designs” to Ford engineers, the suit said. They repeatedly asked him to discuss designs, it said, leading Kearns to believe that Ford would buy his system.
Kearns, a River Rouge, Mich., native and a University of Detroit graduate who now lives in Gaithersburg, Md., filed suit against Ford and other auto makers to protect patents he obtained between 1967 and 1974.
“It took true grit on the part of the inventor, going up against a very formidable opponent, and it took some degree of arrogance on the part of the auto firms,” said Robert Merges, a patent expert at Boston University Law School.
“Given the fact that patents seem to be gaining momentum” in recent court decisions, “it was probably a mistake to litigate this all the way to the end,” he said.
