![]() ![]() “You cannot have big offices and fancy cars and everybody with an administrative assistant, because we are competing with China,” he said. Brown, 56, who teaches industrial design at Northwestern University, says LoggerHead operated on a shoestring and he plowed much of the profit back into the company. The tool sold fairly well on its own - LoggerHead has shipped 1.75 million of them - but Mr. Brown resisted overtures from large chain stores that wanted to sell the tool under their proprietary brand, he said, and rejected the lure of cheaper manufacturing in China. The Bionic Wrench was greeted with enthusiasm at trade shows and in industrial design competitions, and the company survived the downturn in 2008. Brown formed a company, LoggerHead Tools, to bring it to market, making a point of having it made in the United States. “It’s hard for me to imagine that Sears isn’t particularly careful about breach of patent, so there’s probably another side to the story,” he said.Īfter patenting the wrench in 2005, Mr. The fact that Sears made some changes to the wrench’s design, like making the grooves that allow the metal prongs to slide back and forth visible instead of hidden, will make the case more challenging, he said. What happened to me is what happened to so many people so many times, and we just don’t talk about it.” “When people get the innovation, they go right offshore. “Our situation is an example of why we’re not getting jobs out of innovation,” he said. Brown sees a broader issue than just the fate of his wrench. “And that’s not to mention our suppliers,” he added. Since Sears has halted new orders, the Pennsylvania company that makes the Bionic Wrench has had to lay off 31 workers, said Keith Hammer, the project manager at the company, Penn United Technologies. The Bionic Wrench is distinguished by its gripping mechanism, a circle of metal prongs that, inspired by the aperture in a single-lens reflex camera, descend evenly to lock onto almost any nut or bolt. Brown says he believes that the Max Axess wrench copies his own and he is planning to file suit against Sears, which declined to answer any questions about the wrenches for this article. He is Dan Brown, an industrial designer in Chicago who came up with the wrench after watching his son try to work on a lawn mower. Still, the inventor of the Bionic Wrench is determined to fight. ![]() ![]() For the little guy, court battles are inevitably time-consuming and costly, no matter the outcome. ![]() The story of the Bionic Wrench versus Craftsman, which bills itself as “America’s most trusted tool brand,” also raises questions about how much entrepreneurs and innovators, who rely on the country’s intellectual property laws, can protect themselves. ![]()
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