Word: bjorn
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...years later Bjorn-Larsen was shocked when Munsingwear introduced the Stocking Locking Girdle, a tummy tamer strikingly similar to the one he had designed. Bjorn-Larsen protested to the company in vain for three years and finally, in 1972, took the case to court...
Inventor Knut Bjorn-Larsen might not have hollered "Eureka!" when he developed a garterless girdle back in 1965. But Bjorn-Larsen, 58, of Carpinteria, Calif., would be readily excused if he hollered himself hoarse last week. The reason: in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a federal judge ordered Munsingwear Inc. of Minneapolis to pay Bjorn-Larsen $31 million in damages for fraud and patent infringement...
...native of Norway, Bjorn-Larsen is a born tinkerer. While doing graduate work in bacteriology and biochemistry at Berkeley and U.S.C., he relished playing Louis Pasteur with his potions and Petri dishes. But, for financial reasons, he never finished his doctorate and eventually became an insurance broker. On the evening of April 27, 1963, Bjorn-Larsen was in bed with an aching back when he began thinking about his wife's pet peeve: girdle garters that put holes in her stockings and made them run. Recalls Bjorn-Larsen: "I knew there had to be a better way to attach...
Using his laboratory expertise, Bjorn-Larsen developed a way to bind the chemical polyvinyl chloride to elastic girdle fabric and thereby make the inner cuffs of the garment sticky enough to hold up stockings. In 1965 Munsingwear, a major clothing manufacturer and maker of the familiar Penguin shirts, signed a contract with Bjorn-Larsen, promising him $1,000 a month as advances on royalties for exclusive use of his idea. But in late 1967 the payments stopped after totaling $14,000; Munsingwear told him that his idea had not panned...
...Bjorn-Larsen is now divorced from his wife, who inspired the revolutionary girdle. But under California's community property law she will receive half of the final settlement...