Word: patents
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...tactics. One noteworthy case occurred with fiber optics, a rapidly expanding field in which glass fibers are used to transmit information in the form of laser light pulses. The Japanese breakthroughs came only after Corning Glass, a leader in fiber optics, made the mistake of applying for a Japanese patent. Since the patent process is open to public inspection, Japanese firms studied the U.S. company's approach as well as the subsequent work of Bell Labs, and then made their own innovative improvements. Japanese fiber optics are today as good as any in the world...
Much of the work done in the U.S. by attorneys is processed in Japan by nearly 90,000 scriveners and other workers, many of whom have undergraduate law degrees. They make up an extensive, inexpensive and nearly invisible legal-services network, dealing with ordinary tax, patent, administrative and real estate transactions. Nor do lawyers handle fender-bending auto accidents. Japanese insurance companies normally dispose of claims without resorting to the almost pro forma suits that many U.S. underwriters seem to demand before a settlement is made. A judge's ruling is sought only in extreme conditions if negotiation fails...
...19th century. Throughout Historian Harvey Green's lively text, advertisements, advice columns, how-to manuals and diaries kept by women of the period attest to an oppressed existence, all too often foreshortened by death from childbirth. Small wonder that Victorian women ingested vast quantities of alcohol and opium patent medicines. Inveighing against these tranquilizers of the age, one physician declared, "Their manufacturers are deserving of a place in the deepest part of the bottomless pit." His foresight is an astonishment; Green's hindsight is an education...
Movies about the press inevitably display lots of typewriters on which reporters furiously bang out their stories as if they were using artillery. Such scenes illustrate the idea that the typewriter can be a weapon, which recalls the original patent that the inventor, Christopher Latham Sholes, sold to E. Remington & Sons, a manufacturer of firearms. There is always something heroically decisive about a character's plunking himself down before a typewriter in a movie. The machine itself becomes an instrument of integrity, which may be one of the things we miss when it finally disappears...
...these new forays into the food business, P & G is banking on its renowned research team to develop products that the public will find better than existing brands. Analyst Segalas, who studies every patent that P & G applies for, believes that the company will spring more surprises in the future. He thinks, for example, that P & G is working on a lowfat, low-calorie, low-cholesterol cookie that will taste good without causing tooth decay. For the moment, though, P & G will be urging Americans to eat sugar-filled Duncan Hines cookies-and brush regularly with its Crest toothpaste...