A “Polaroid Moment” in Intellectual Property History
50 years after their invention, Polaroid is still synonymous with those cute, nonchalant little instant photographic prints, spit out half-baked onto our floors or developing in our hands in seconds. Humanity has now taken them for granted, but they remain a genuine marvel to this day. We went from elaborate print facilities the size of a city block, to a miniature print lab within the camera, in the palm of your hands, seemingly overnight.
The miracle of instant photography seemed to come in an instant, then was forgotten, just as suddenly.
Ironically, it’s our latest generation that now remembers them best. Walk into any Urban Outfitters, and you’ll find displays dedicated to Polaroids. Even though this invention is decades old, it feels custom-made for Generation Z, and their love of “instant” photograph (Instagram, anyone?). But like all youth, they resent the latest corporate pressure from their parents’ generation. They sometimes embrace the analogue affectations of their grandparents. The irony is delicious, and they learn something through the rebellion. Maybe a photo print, that costs us something to make, can be more significant? Maybe a Polaroid moment has more “moment,” than an Instagram share?
Whatever the reason, Polaroids are back. And, at the moment of the 50th anniversary of the Polaroid SX-70, the instant camera that developed the entire market, we wanted to talk about Polaroid’s “Polaroid Moment” – the moment that made all the difference for Polaroid’s success.
Like so many stories, it could have gone very differently, and, in a parallel universe, we might never have had Polaroids at all. Polaroid was a small company, founded by Edwin Land. Today, Edwin Land is a legend, and serial inventor second only to Thomas Edison. But when Polaroid started, he was just a guy with an idea. Like many of our individual clients who come to us for help today, he was facing a sea of corporate Leviathans, bent on maintaining their dominance of the market. But he had excellent business instincts and he knew, instinctively, that if he simply launched his idea, his much larger competitors would quickly steal his idea, and blanket the world with their own products, implementing the idea. After all, companies like Kodak already had thousands of employees, factories, marketing divisions spending more each day on advertising alone than his entire budget. He knew better than to think his product would simply “go viral” without any marketing spend, while his competitors simply sit idly by.
He knew that he needed – that in fact all he had – was his intellectual property. So, he protected it. And he did more than simply file one patent to “tag the base” and delude himself that it was sufficient. He built a patent and intellectual portfolio that was second-to-none. Throughout the company’s history, Edwin Land filed over 500 patents, on a range of technologies, and, by that count, was the second most prolific inventor of his time, after Thomas Edison. The portfolio was well-crafted, covering all aspects of the Polaroid Instant Camera brilliance. Tried as they might, with all of their might, his competitors could not steal or “engineer around” his concepts.
The rest is well-known business history. Kodak failed to compete with him in the instant photography space, and those little white window-box instant prints are forever “Polaroids” in our hearts.
