Acknowledgments

• Author: Ronald K. Fierstein
• Profession: Lawyer on the team of litigators from the prestigious patent law firm of Fish & Neave
• Pages: 535-537

535

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No “last, but not least” for me. First and foremost, I have to acknowledge

the help of my wife, Dorsey Regal. She is not only the most supportive

(or tolerant, some might say) and perfect life partner, she is the best edi-

tor on the planet. She helped me immeasurably with early drafts of the

manuscript, enlightening me to those pesky rules that govern the written

word, and helping me find clarity where my thoughts were either obtuse

or otherwise undelivered. I owe her big time. And I love her very much.

Our family provides the foundation that makes everything possible.

Our sons, Brad and Matt, fill us with the love and pride that make it all

worthwhile. My brother, Harvey, has taught me (and lots of others) that

it is not only okay but imperative to be who you are and to believe that

anything is possible. Our late mother, Jackie, instilled in both of us a love

of the arts and passed on some of her librarian genes, which makes, for

me at least, the arduous process of research an adventure and a joy. Our

late father, Irving, imbued us with a work ethic and commitment to family

that is our bedrock.

As anyone who has undertaken a project of this magnitude can attest,

one must be inspired to make the commitment necessary to devote a sig-

nificant portion of one’s life to this kind of endeavor. My motivation came

from two disparate sources, the confluence of which pushed me off my

personal fence into action.

The first was Edwin H. Land. As a young lawyer, fresh out of law

school, I unexpectedly found myself squarely in the middle of an extraor-

dinary event, the epic Polaroid v. Kodak lawsuit. More importantly, after

a time I somehow found myself working directly with Land. While some

people, including many of his own Polaroid colleagues, found Land

intimidating, he was never anything less than gracious and supportive to

me, a neophyte frantically learning as much as I could about a field of

technology that he knew more about than any other person on the planet.

My fundamental task—trying to get him to consider the intricacies of this

technology in the very specific context of the legal issues presented by the

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