A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein

Author:Ronald K. Fierstein [Fierstein, Ronald K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627227704
Publisher: American Bar Association
Published: 2015-02-15T23:00:00+00:00


Figure 17-3: Land holding one of two bull mastiff puppies presented to him at the 1980 shareholders meeting in Boston’s Symphony Hall. William J. McCune is pictured in the background.

Courtesy Bettman/CORBIS

In part, this reassurance was a calculated message aimed at the financial community who continued to look to Land to provide Polaroid with the technological leadership and creativity only he was capable of furnishing. He was widely recognized as the company’s biggest asset and still, despite this management reshuffling and his advancing age, its biggest hope for the future. Not unexpectedly, Land’s impending departure had some observers expressing concern over Polaroid’s prospects. It was clearly a company that relied on introducing new and exciting products in technologies it pioneered. At that time, the only hint that something might be in the Polaroid product pipeline was the disclosure that Polaroid’s expenditures for research and development had increased twenty-seven percent in 1979, the most ever.42 The pressure was clearly on the company to deliver given that, as one journalist expressed it, “the hope that a new marvel will soon emerge from the company’s labs and instantly capture the public’s fancy has now become an expectation.”43

This expectation was seen by some as a continuing challenge for Land, something he always embraced. “Though he will be seventy-one years old in May,” noted Fortune, “there is always the chance that the autocratic Land, who is always eager to prove the rest of the world wrong, will come up, once again, with inventions to bolster the fortunes of the enterprise he created.”44 After all, its fundamental financial condition, with no long-term debt and a largely self-sufficient manufacturing operation, remained strong. And as long as Land remained associated with the company, albeit in a new role, miracles were yet possible.

Immediate concern about Polaroid quickly faded, however, when, in a sudden turnabout, Polaroid’s 1980 first-quarter sales surged to “exceed even the ‘most bullish of street estimates.’”45 In the second quarter, Polaroid’s net income increased thirteen percent despite a one percent drop in sales, a drop attributed to the effects of the country’s continuing woes, economic and otherwise. With the financial picture of the company improving, and with the drama and the emotion of the executive transition having ebbed, Land’s focus quickly returned to the lawsuit. He sat for the final four days of his deposition in mid-May. By now, completely comfortable with the process, and thoroughly educated on the technical and legal issues, he acquitted himself beautifully, from Polaroid’s point of view, effectively frustrating Carr on every line of inquiry.

But Schwartz was puzzled: why did Kodak keep up these exhaustive (and exhausting) examinations of Land and other key Polaroid witnesses? To Kerr and Schwartz, there were at least two major mistakes in this approach. First, there was Kerr’s conviction that a good trial lawyer should never waste his or her good stuff in depositions, unless you thought that by doing so you could blow your opponent’s case out of the water. The better strategy was to save it for trial, he believed.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.