In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
'Smart Gun' secret nets $550,000
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
'Smart Gun' secret nets $550,000
By Henry Pierson Curtis | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted May 22, 2002
How a 'safe gun' works. (SHINIKO R. FLOYD/ORLANDO SENTINEL)
Using the most sought-after trade secret in the firearms industry without permission cost a tiny Volusia County firm $550,000 Tuesday.
The award in federal court in Orlando amounted to little more than pocket change in the billion-dollar race by the world's gun makers to develop safer pistols, rifles and shotguns.
The lawsuit came to Central Florida because the O.F. Mossberg & Sons firearms conglomerate hired the inventor of the so-called "Smart Gun" in 1997 to work as a consultant with one of its research facilities in Daytona Beach.
At stake were $2.8 billion in new gun sales, according to Mossberg market research.
Safe-gun technology has become an increasing public safety issue over the deaths of children, and police officers shot with their own weapons. The goal is to build a gun that can be fired only by an authorized user.
Untold riches appeared to await Kenneth J. Pugh of Houston, a retired Navy tinkerer who holds the first U.S. patent for safe-gun technology.
Outfitted with a tiny magnetic switch in the handle, Pugh's gun would not fire unless the shooter wore an encoder ring. Granted patents in 1991 and 1992, he succeeded where teams of engineers had failed.
But the Mossberg project soured, partly because Pugh embarrassed the family firm by claiming safe-gun technology had been available for years, according to testimony during the five-day trial.
Fired in 1999, Pugh hired a team of Texas attorneys a year later, when a shotgun was marketed using his trade secrets and patent, according to testimony.
He sued Mossberg as well as KinTech Manufacturing Inc., a husband-and-wife engineering firm in Daytona Beach found guilty Tuesday of using Pugh's secrets.
Calling it a case of a dreamer duped by a schemer and a rogue, attorney Charles Vethan of Houston convinced the jury that an engineer working for a Mossberg affiliate, Advanced Ordnance Corp. of Daytona Beach, encouraged hiring KinTech to work on the project.
No one told Pugh until months later that the engineer, George Kluwe, owned stock in KinTech and was sharing Pugh's trade secrets with owner Kevin Kinion, according to testimony.
O.F. Mossberg & Sons was a codefendant in the lawsuit, but avoided scrutiny of its business practices by reaching an undisclosed settlement with Pugh in February.
Jonathan Mossberg, the younger of two sons in the family-owned conglomerate, remained the focus of criticism by both sides in the case.
He opened Advanced Ordnance Corp. in 1996 in Daytona Beach to produce products for the aerospace, defense and firearms industries.
It was he who hired all the parties in the case, claimed a share of a patent that came out of their work and formed another company, iGun Technology Corp. in Daytona Beach, to market the shotgun Pugh claimed was produced with his trade secrets.
The iGun shotgun, a Mossberg shotgun outfitted with a radio-wave switch and an encoder ring, has not been marketed.
Pugh remains convinced safe guns will one day help save thousands of lives.
"In the near future, but I just don't know when," he said.
Henry Pierson Curtis can be reached at hcurtis@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5411.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-locsmartgun22052202may22.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
Copyright c 2002, Orlando Sentinel
Edited by - Josey1 on 05/22/2002 12:29:45
By Henry Pierson Curtis | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted May 22, 2002
How a 'safe gun' works. (SHINIKO R. FLOYD/ORLANDO SENTINEL)
Using the most sought-after trade secret in the firearms industry without permission cost a tiny Volusia County firm $550,000 Tuesday.
The award in federal court in Orlando amounted to little more than pocket change in the billion-dollar race by the world's gun makers to develop safer pistols, rifles and shotguns.
The lawsuit came to Central Florida because the O.F. Mossberg & Sons firearms conglomerate hired the inventor of the so-called "Smart Gun" in 1997 to work as a consultant with one of its research facilities in Daytona Beach.
At stake were $2.8 billion in new gun sales, according to Mossberg market research.
Safe-gun technology has become an increasing public safety issue over the deaths of children, and police officers shot with their own weapons. The goal is to build a gun that can be fired only by an authorized user.
Untold riches appeared to await Kenneth J. Pugh of Houston, a retired Navy tinkerer who holds the first U.S. patent for safe-gun technology.
Outfitted with a tiny magnetic switch in the handle, Pugh's gun would not fire unless the shooter wore an encoder ring. Granted patents in 1991 and 1992, he succeeded where teams of engineers had failed.
But the Mossberg project soured, partly because Pugh embarrassed the family firm by claiming safe-gun technology had been available for years, according to testimony during the five-day trial.
Fired in 1999, Pugh hired a team of Texas attorneys a year later, when a shotgun was marketed using his trade secrets and patent, according to testimony.
He sued Mossberg as well as KinTech Manufacturing Inc., a husband-and-wife engineering firm in Daytona Beach found guilty Tuesday of using Pugh's secrets.
Calling it a case of a dreamer duped by a schemer and a rogue, attorney Charles Vethan of Houston convinced the jury that an engineer working for a Mossberg affiliate, Advanced Ordnance Corp. of Daytona Beach, encouraged hiring KinTech to work on the project.
No one told Pugh until months later that the engineer, George Kluwe, owned stock in KinTech and was sharing Pugh's trade secrets with owner Kevin Kinion, according to testimony.
O.F. Mossberg & Sons was a codefendant in the lawsuit, but avoided scrutiny of its business practices by reaching an undisclosed settlement with Pugh in February.
Jonathan Mossberg, the younger of two sons in the family-owned conglomerate, remained the focus of criticism by both sides in the case.
He opened Advanced Ordnance Corp. in 1996 in Daytona Beach to produce products for the aerospace, defense and firearms industries.
It was he who hired all the parties in the case, claimed a share of a patent that came out of their work and formed another company, iGun Technology Corp. in Daytona Beach, to market the shotgun Pugh claimed was produced with his trade secrets.
The iGun shotgun, a Mossberg shotgun outfitted with a radio-wave switch and an encoder ring, has not been marketed.
Pugh remains convinced safe guns will one day help save thousands of lives.
"In the near future, but I just don't know when," he said.
Henry Pierson Curtis can be reached at hcurtis@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5411.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-locsmartgun22052202may22.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
Copyright c 2002, Orlando Sentinel
Edited by - Josey1 on 05/22/2002 12:29:45
Comments
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878