Its all happened before

Imagine a huge company with a brandname product that is instantly recognizable all over the Western hemisphere. Its products are used by millions of people and its leaders are some of the most powerful men in the US. Some little inventor living in a cold country comes along and creates a technology that threatens to make the huge company obsolete. At first, the big guys dismiss the new technology as a hobby, but when it catches on serious interest, they strike a deal with another person who claims to be the inventor of the technology and thus funded, that inventor challenges the patents of the first inventor in court. The trial drags on, and it seems to many uninformed people that the poor inventor's company must ultimately fold before the might of the huge company that is fighting him by proxy. But he wins, and the new technology rapidly supplants the old one. The huge company is now hit with a spate of lawsuits, and fast forward many decades, it quietly retires the old technology, which by now is considered to be a quaint thing, worthy of a museum, and rational men and women wonder what it must have been like to get by with something so limiting.

Now before you guys lambast me for claiming that I am extrapolating the future of Microsoft and IBM is no small poor inventor's company that invented open source, let me disabuse you of any such notions. The huge company above is Western Union, and the small upstart inventor's name is probably familiar to you - Alexander Graham Bell. And a few weeks ago, Western Union formally stopped offering telegraph services.

"A far more serious adversary, however, than any inventor with a grievance was the Western Union Telegraph Company. At that time the Western Union was far and away the largest and richest telegraph company in the world. Its directors saw in Bell?s company a potential source of danger to its own monopoly, and at once set to work to overcome it. Three inventors, Edison, Gray, and Dolbear, were employed to invent a telephone which should be as good as Alexander Bell?s, and yet not infringe his patent.

The Western Union?s chief electrical expert attempted to find an invention which preceded Bell?s. He even employed a linguist, who knew eight languages, for purposes of translation. All to no purpose, however, for, as the final report to his directors states, "I am entirely unable to discover any apparatus... anticipating the invention . . . and I conclude that his patent is valid. . . ."

Then the Western Union tried to squeeze out the Bell Company by means of influence and its own long purse. For a time things looked as black as possible for Bell and his partners. They were neither rich, influential, nor powerful enough to fight such a vast concern as the Western Union. Each day people expected to see the Bell headquarters hoist the white flag of surrender. Finally the Western Union espoused Gray?s claims to be the real inventor of the telephone, and instructed its lawyers to proceed against Bell for infringement of Gray?s patent.

The resulting lawsuit began during the autumn of 1878, and was waged from court to court throughout twelve months. After this prolonged struggle the Western Union?s chief counsel, George Gifford, came to the conclusion that a decision could never be obtained in favour of Gray, and the proceedings were therefore dropped."