Talk:Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory

(Photo caption)

The figure caption is incorrect. I was present, and have a photo of the Mayor of Mountain View dedicating the marker (visible in the corner of your photo, in the concrete) which clearly mentions Shockley by name.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.64.100.112 (talk) 07:13, 2 October 2006‎

S. Valley phenomenon

   I found, but removed the facile

Engineers leaving the company stayed in the area; engineers leaving these companies did the same, and soon an entire industry built up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

which pretends (but fails) to explain the geographic concentration of this industry, which is unconstrained by geography but dependent on pointy heads, to a degree unusual for traditional industries. IM-unqualified-O, the critical element was that a crucial cream of the crop of engineers and scientists, finding that MBAs and investors were unqualified to make the crucial investment and management decisions re such transformational technologies, took on those roles, and (especially as the growth rates and uncertainties were greater than is traditional in building large enterprises, and transportation of raw materials and product so minor a factor) chose to forgo the kind of wide-ranging location selection processes that major corporations tend toward, and instead thought local. But we deserve serious verification effort on this.
--Jerzy•t 08:50, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Closed by ITT

   Did ITT close it bcz they'd made a mistake in purchasing it, or bcz they'd bought the "business" just to get ownership of some technology, e.g. patents?
--Jerzy•t 09:17, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Language re patents

   It seems likely that someone butchered accurate language attempting to clarify something; in any case

... basing patents on any important ideas for Shockley Labs

will be at best a trial for most readers to make any sense of. I made it read

basing patents, held as Shockley Labs' intellectual property, on any important ideas.

While i'm no specialist in IP law, it is routine in commercial science and engineering for ideas developed in the course of work duties to belong to the company and for the employees to

1. be contractually bound to cooperate with acquiring patents when the employer finds it worth the effort, and
2. legally assign the right to use the patent(s) -- perhaps by agreement at the time of hiring -- to the company, perhaps for $1 per patent, or for a flat $1 payment covering all patents conceived or granted during the employment.

Wouldn't be surprised if someone else could word it better.
--Jerzy•t 03:09, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

   I said in the edit-summary that accompanied the above talk contrib "You can't patent ideas w/o reduction to practice." IIRC, a clearer statement is that you can't patent ideas at all, and an invention is more than an idea. The invention includes a reduction to practice (not entirely uselessly described in that wretched article); the patent is not "on the idea" but on the invention that is constituted or produced by reduction of the idea to practice.
   It might be interesting to know how many of the previously unpatented ideas had been reduced to practice by Schockley's firm, as they might have done in the process of separating elements of technology that might make a profit from those pretty sure to multiply, further than the merely profitable potential business plans, all of the capital Schockley's firm could lay hands on.
--Jerzy•t 03:00, 17 March 2015 (UTC)