I just recently saw a very inspiring movie Flash of Genius. It is about principle over money and it is out on DVD.
Based on the true story of college professor and part-time inventor Robert Kearns’ long battle with the U.S. automobile industry, Flash of Genius tells the tale of one man whose fight to receive recognition for his ingenuity would come at a heavy price.
But this determined engineer refused to be silenced, and he took on the corporate titans in a battle that nobody thought he could win. The Kearns were a typical 1960s Detroit family, trying to live their version of the American Dream.
Local university professor Bob married teacher Phyllis and, by their mid-thirties, had six kids who brought them a hectic but satisfying Midwestern existence. When Bob invents a device that would eventually be used by every car in the world, the Kearns think they have struck gold. But their aspirations are dashed after the auto giants who embraced Bob’s creation unceremoniously shunned the man who invented it.
Ignored, threatened and then buried in years of litigation, Bob is haunted by what was done to his family and their future. He becomes a man obsessed with justice and the conviction that his life’s work-or for that matter, anyone’s work-be acknowledged by those who stood to benefit. And while paying the toll for refusing to compromise his dignity, this everyday David will try the unthinkable: to bring Goliath to his knees.
Source: http://www.imdb.com
Follow this path Susan. Don’t give up. Don’t let Goichberg and the USCF bully you. Go all the way to fight corruption!
My Dad, Robert Kearns, worked on the film for about 5 years before his death. Greg never got a opportunity to meet him, but did a magnificent job of becoming him.
Perhaps more would have seen this movie in the US had it not come out just as the Automotive Industry started whining about about their inability to manage their businesses without Billions of OUR dollars?
I noticed Universal had put it on their Oscar Contenders website. Then removed it a few days later.
I’m proud to have been a consultant on the movie and to have participated in the reality.
Bob Kearns won 5 jury trials against some of the biggest corporations in the world. It was what he had learned in school, it was what he as an engineering professor taught. Patents were granted to protect the inventors rights.
Perhaps his idealism was from his Jesuit training at the University of Detroit.
His U.S. Marine Corps training taught him when a bully picks a fight you don’t back down. No matter the odds.
As for the other players:
The law firm HDP.com that started the suits on our behalf represented Chrysler against us.
Federal Judge Avern Cohn and his former silk-stocking law partners along with Henry Ford II’s friend Max Fisher, were estimated to have made a 2000% profit on the sale of property for Chrysler’s World Headquarters (Detroit: Race and Uneven Development 1990)
Dennis Kearns
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http://Dennis-Kearns.com
The arrow that hits the bull’s eye is the result of 100 misses.
Dennis,
I have never heard of your father or his trials until I saw the previews of this movie. I bought the DVD as soon as it came out.
I have to say that I am very impressed with the passion, integrity and determination of your late father. Most would have taken the big money and run. But he turned it down to fight for justice and for what he believed in. That is a rare and admirable quality.
Thank you for sharing his story with us and best wishes to you and your family.
Susan Polgar