I will declare a personal bias but not a company one.
Billy and Adam are friends of mine, not bosom buddies but I have spent a lot of time with them both and stayed at their houses and got to know them pretty well.
They never involved me in their business affairs and so I can rightly declare the required detachment but ironically my point will be personal ... but not to them.
I wonder how many of the people throwing their hands up in righteous indignation would not have done the same thing in similar positions?
Of course, everybody will declare the moral high-ground and confound commonsense by having me believe we don't have one honest soul who would go down a similar road.
I don't agree with a lot of what they did and I told them so to their face on occasion but really, I had no right to; The US is a hotbed of litigation and patent fraud ..... really, what would you have done?
And before you answer, do you really know what they did, or did you just hear about them eating babies?
I also wonder how many Brits here nurture a hatred for SP because in the early days of that patent struggle, they were pitched up against our own WDP and thus set in motion a US v UK patent/propoganda issue war ...... do we all really think that during those years of litigation between the two companies, the white flag of truth and justice was held aloft every day by WDP?
Both of those companies fought tooth and nail and did everything they could to protect what they believed to be their own.
And before any ignoramus tries to tell me WDP were first with their electronic marker then wind yer necks in and listen up, I was playing for the All Americans (Billy and Adam's team) when that first Shocker was being made and I was privy at that time to a small window of its development ..... that period co-incided exactly with the same development time-frame of WDP's Angel .... And I have zero idea (and I doubt whether the Gardners or the Greens do either) who crossed that finish line first with regard to fully completed, patentable marker.
The point is though, in the US, it's the people who patent first who are declared the winners in that particular race.
The ensuing litigation war duly polarised the industry because everybody knew what was looming in terms of royalties but I tell ya one thing, there wasn't one person among those industry guys who wouldn't have done much the same thing as SP.
I would hope I try to be a stand-up guy who doesn't fcuk his mates over, but in the US this is done with consummate ease and with the convenient euphemism of 'It's just business' .... this apparently makes it OK for anybody to fcuk anybody in the US, even friends.
I know of only two men who probably wouldn't have gone down this road of fcuking friends over (who were in a position to do this) but I tell ya what, they would have still patented the ass outa of every other bastid out there.
But saying all this, there were some things Billy and Adam did that I would never have done and I done some baaaaadd things in my life but then, so did WDP in what they would have described as their fight for survival .... but I wonder if it's all a matter of perspective here ... or at least in part.
I spose my point after all this is, things ain't always what they seem and who among us knows exactly what went down, all we have are approximations to the truth, some more approximate than others.
And please, I don't want this post to deter anybody spouting off, I ain't gonna jump down nobody's throat (well, as long as you don't attack me that is) for attacking SP or the Gardners but if you do, please don't do it unless you are gonna explain why you are doing it.
Apart from that, I look forward to reading them, no matter how vitriolic they are.
