Stomski
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEECH!! But don't worry. It won't happen again.
Posts: 6,121
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Post by Stomski on Jan 7, 2022 13:43:14 GMT
In the passing of Henry Orenstein, some rather stories are being told about his involvement with Transformers. (Previously I've lamented people in the poker scene claiming he "invented" Transformers, which whilst you could argue he was responsible for pushing Hasbro towards a specific product line and theme, inventing Transformers in and of itself is a bit of a stretch.) A couple of clips from a recent poker podcast... youtube.com/clip/UgkxjSvXA9gVhpU5kD3a4GJDaUVXemtilS3cyoutube.com/clip/UgkxD2m8MKr2UstD3giYAGT1faK3qzXLQmbxJust some oddities... - Transformers selling in 73/74 - Orenstein was with Mattel - In 2003/2004 the Transformers brand was trying to be phased out with a similar product because they wanted to stop paying Orenstein royalties The first two are likely just getting dates/names wrong. The latter I'm wondering if there is any truth in it, but the dates are completely wrong. If Orenstein owned the patent in some form to a toy vehicle that could change into a robot, at what point (presumably post G1) has Hasbro been pushing an alternative? You could theorise that this story actually happened 2 decades prior and it was GoBots (hence the Mattel confusion), but Mori mentions that Orenstein called him about it and they didn't meet until they got involved with poker broadcasts mid 90s. It certainly wasn't 2003/2004 as stated my Mori, as this was when Hasbro were actively ramping up Transformers branding through toyline/cartoon/comic/third party licensed products. |
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Post by Toph on Jan 7, 2022 15:43:46 GMT
And Hasbro would not give up billions to not pay one dude minor royalties.
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Post by Bogatan on Jan 7, 2022 18:12:19 GMT
I guess takara kept pushing alternatives around then. Microman, Web Diver, Brave. But I cant see why they would have been paying him royalties.
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Post by Llama God on Jan 8, 2022 10:10:51 GMT
As with working for any large company I would assume that any IP that was created by any Hasbro employee was immediately the property of Hasbro itself. I've certainly been in that situation - I have patents awarded in my name but because they were created as a by-product of my work they do in fact belong to my (previous) employer. I would therefore find it very unlikely that Orenstein owned any IP of any kind in relation to Transformers - anything he did for the line would've been part of his job, and thus automatically Hasbro's property anyway.
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Post by The Doctor on Jan 8, 2022 10:34:59 GMT
Who is Henry Orenstein? What's going on?
-Ralph
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 8, 2022 10:51:21 GMT
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Post by Bogatan on Jan 8, 2022 11:16:13 GMT
As with working for any large company I would assume that any IP that was created by any Hasbro employee was immediately the property of Hasbro itself. I've certainly been in that situation - I have patents awarded in my name but because they were created as a by-product of my work they do in fact belong to my (previous) employer. I would therefore find it very unlikely that Orenstein owned any IP of any kind in relation to Transformers - anything he did for the line would've been part of his job, and thus automatically Hasbro's property anyway. I can imagine some kind of commission or bonus based the success of properties/bands/whatever he helped bring to market. And I can imagine that whoever wrote that contract didnt foresee one of those brands still going 20 years later, so no time limit on those payments being included. Im thinking of the contract Kenner signed that gave them the Star wars toy rights in perpetuity as long as they paid some timy amount like $5000 a year. And then Star Wars taking a decade long break that only ended just after Kenner had forgotten to make such a payment and Lucas had the toy rights back. But I cant imagine this guys bonus was so big it would have made Hasbro try and cancel Transformers especially around that time when things were going well and the first talk of the movie would have been going on. the only time this would have made any sense to me would be a decade earlier with G1 ending in the US and then G2 not being a huge success, maybe there would have been talk about making Beast Wars a completely new property, but again it would have to have been one hell of a bonus/royalty to ditch the brand over it. |
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jan 8, 2022 11:20:24 GMT
Someone reputed to be involved in bringing TFs to the west. *wracks brain* Henry VIII... Henry Winkler... Henery Hawk... Nope, sorry. Sure you haven't just invented him as a New Year lark? Martin |
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Post by Pinwig on Jan 8, 2022 14:20:08 GMT
Who is Henry Orenstein? What's going on? -Ralph Who are you people? What are you doing in my living room! |
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jan 8, 2022 14:32:28 GMT
Who are you people? What are you doing in my living room! Martin |
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Stomski
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEECH!! But don't worry. It won't happen again.
Posts: 6,121
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Post by Stomski on Jan 8, 2022 20:08:01 GMT
One thing's for sure... Don't trust poker players!
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Post by Llama God on Jan 9, 2022 9:36:30 GMT
As with working for any large company I would assume that any IP that was created by any Hasbro employee was immediately the property of Hasbro itself. I've certainly been in that situation - I have patents awarded in my name but because they were created as a by-product of my work they do in fact belong to my (previous) employer. I would therefore find it very unlikely that Orenstein owned any IP of any kind in relation to Transformers - anything he did for the line would've been part of his job, and thus automatically Hasbro's property anyway. I can imagine some kind of commission or bonus based the success of properties/bands/whatever he helped bring to market. And I can imagine that whoever wrote that contract didnt foresee one of those brands still going 20 years later, so no time limit on those payments being included. Im thinking of the contract Kenner signed that gave them the Star wars toy rights in perpetuity as long as they paid some timy amount like $5000 a year. And then Star Wars taking a decade long break that only ended just after Kenner had forgotten to make such a payment and Lucas had the toy rights back. But I cant imagine this guys bonus was so big it would have made Hasbro try and cancel Transformers especially around that time when things were going well and the first talk of the movie would have been going on. Yeah, he may well have been awarded some sort of bonus, but given how large American companies work I imagine that it would've been a one-off, and not something that was in perpetuity. Finding properties for Hasbro to acquire and use would've been his job, and so he'd have maybe got a bonus for doing a good job with Transformers, but the next year he'd had had to find something else instead. I'd be very surprised if it was anything other than that. |
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Stomski
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEECH!! But don't worry. It won't happen again.
Posts: 6,121
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Post by Stomski on Jan 10, 2022 7:35:52 GMT
He was well renowned for owning hundreds of patents (such as the poker table hole card camera for TV broadcasts). Is it possible he had some form of the US converting vehicle/robot patent after seeing the concept in Japan and was trying to earn royalties on that?
Can we access patents by owner online?
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Post by Llama God on Jan 10, 2022 8:12:41 GMT
Well, Wikipedia seems to think that he has a patent on Transformers, but offers no citation as evidence, so we can't be sure. And that seems unlikely that he would, given that it's difficult to grant patents on items with prior art. And given that he did not invent Transformers, only discovered the toys that would become Transformers, that seems unlikely. HOWEVER. The US patent systen is also a strange beast, and the definition of what lawyers will allow as "prior art" seems to vary from application to application. For example, my patents are mostly based around computer software (since my job involves writing that), and some that were granted have been a surprise given how basic they were; others, however, were rejected on the grounds that, essentially, "it is already possible for computers to do stuff" - which is a fairly broad category but there you go. So it can seem quite inconsistent. That said, Orenstein has many patents that you can find on Google, including these two: patents.google.com/patent/USD264107S for a toy car, and patents.google.com/patent/USD265673S for a toy robot. You would *think* that these would be difficult things to patent, since cars and robots already existed in many medias by this point, but there you go. Sometimes if things had not been officially registered as patented then it might, depending on the lawyers involved and rules at the time, have been possible to patent them. You can see that other patents also reference this one, since these are initial patents for toy robots and cars, so it's possible that he might not have patents for Transformers himself, but patents by Hasbro would be forced to reference these as prior art. There is, however, one conclusive patent relating to Transformers: the rub sign: patents.google.com/patent/USD297337S This is unquestionable. However, it's also assigned to Hasbro, since it was clearly created as part of his work though, so he may not have owned it per se, and may only have received a one-off bonus for this work. That, of course, is hard to be sure. Whether or not he had any claim to "owning" Transformers is still questionable. But as I say, the US patent system is a strange beast, and it's possible that given the patents he did hold that that uncertainty was leverage enough for him to claim that he did... |
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Post by The Doctor on Jan 10, 2022 8:43:51 GMT
I AM SPARTACUS.
-Ralph
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Stomski
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEECH!! But don't worry. It won't happen again.
Posts: 6,121
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Post by Stomski on Jan 10, 2022 16:46:21 GMT
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