Who knew? Workmate inventor was a Lotus designer

[URY914]

Found this on another forum...

I never knew.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_19971214/ai_n14469736

Quote from a guy that knows him...

"Ron Hickman, a really clever guy. He came up with his Workmate idea while still working at Lotus, where his input into the Elan and Europa was huge. He left to set up a business turning out Workmates and sold a few thousand, but when he was offered a licencing deal by Black & Decker he had the sense to grab it, while keeping hold of all his worldwide patents. The B & D deal netted him many millions over the next few years, and Ron made much more by successfully pursuing people all over the world who were infringing his patents. If you have a really good and original idea, patents can be a license to print loads of money, as they were in Ron's case. That's only if you get someone really good to draw up a 100% watertight patent of course, in a great many more cases, patents are worth little more than the paper they're printed on, but he got everything right. I last saw Ron several years ago in Jersey, driving a Duesenberg SJ (I think) around St Helier, so good luck to him. His career closely mirrors my own, work at Lotus, be inspired by Chapman, leave to start up on your own etc, but in Ron's case of course, all the numbers have quite a few more noughts on the end than mine do."