July 6, 2009

Years After Inventors Die, Royalties Are Pennies From Heaven

Years After Inventors Die, Royalties Are Pennies From Heaven 1

Fred Mertz for the Chronicle

Stanford U.'s Nancy R. Fuller spent more than a year tracking down one inventor's heir, and the grateful letter she received still chokes her up.

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close Years After Inventors Die, Royalties Are Pennies From Heaven 1

Fred Mertz for the Chronicle

Stanford U.'s Nancy R. Fuller spent more than a year tracking down one inventor's heir, and the grateful letter she received still chokes her up.

By Goldie Blumenstyk

Inventors can be an ungrateful bunch.

At Stanford University, Nancy R. Fuller tracks down former professors and graduate students to send them royalty checks for products they created there, but the responses are often terse: Thanks for finding me. Here's my e-mail.

The letter she got two years ago from the mother of a former genetics postdoc —an heir whom Ms. Fuller had spent more than a year trying to find —was pleasantly different.

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