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  ...the matter out in my own mind."
But of the men who have used Edison's money and ideas, who have made it a life business to study his patents and then use them, evading the law, not a word!
From Eighteen Hundred Seventy to Eighteen Hundred Ninety, Edison secured over nine hundred patents, or at the rate of one patent every ten days. Very few indeed of these patents ever brought him any direct return, and now his plan is to invent and keep the matter a secret in his "family."
 The value of an idea lies in the using of it.   " he said to me. "You patent a thing and the other fellow starts even with you. Keep it to yourself and you have the machinery going before the other fellow is awake. Patents may protect some things, and still others they only advertise. Up in Buffalo you have a great lawyer who says he can drive a coach and four through any will that was ever made--and I guess he can. All good lawyers know how to break wills and contracts, and there are now specialists who secure goodly fees for busting...   Edison, Thomas A.

Excerpt from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 01 Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great · This quote is about ideas · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.


A bit about Edison, Thomas A. ...

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11 1847 - October 18 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices which greatly influenced life in the 20th century. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and can therefore be credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Some of the inventions attributed to him were not completely original but amounted to improvements of earlier inventions or were actually created by numerous employees working under his direction. Nevertheless, Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,097 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

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