There's a great feature in February's (sorry, I'm a little behind) WIPO Magazine about man who describes himself as lazy but who I think is a genius.
Daisuke Inoue, who claims he took up playing the drums because he was lazy and "all you have to do is hit them," stumbled upon gold when he began taping backing music to popular songs so that people in the party could provide the vocals. It seems that when Inoue found that he was unable to accept an invitation to perform music for a business executive's party in 1971, he decided to send a substitute -- prerecorded music that guests could sing along to. The rest is history.
What's unique about Inoue is that he has never pursued any kind of IP protection for his invention. In an era of patent trolls, endemic piracy, and countless legal battles between corporations, it's refreshing to learn that the person responsible for such a popular invention isn't really worried about the potential millions that he could have made had he pursued a patent.
“I’m not an inventor. I simply put things that already exist together, which is completely different. I took a car stereo, a coin box and a small amp to make the karaoke. Who would even consider patenting something like that?”I'll make sure I dedicate my next 5 minutes of karaoke superstardom to Daisuke Inoue, the genius behind karaoke.
2 comments:
Hi Dan, that's really interesting. and he didn't name it after himself, either. in fact, where did that name karaoke come from?
The OED points to this quote from September 23rd, 1979 Sunday Mail (of Brisbane):
"The ‘Karaoke’ (literally ‘empty orchestra’) bars are popular with Japanese office workers."
I hate to generalize, but the cynic in me suspects that if it had been invented in the U.S. it would have been called something along the lines of "MEGA ROCK AND ROLL PARTY."
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