Hiroshi2
03-30-2005, 04:13 PM
Have you ever thought of something that you should've had patented, and then somebody goes and makes money off of it?
It didn't happen to me, but our economics teacher today told us a funny story - he was at a family gathering a couple of summers ago and his sister, who works for Coca-Cola in Atlanta, gave everybody the then-new Vanilla Coke to try out and see if everybody liked it. Nobody liked it, but my teacher had said he put some kiwi lime in his, and it made it taste a lot better. Everybody else did the same, and loved the way it tasted. So later on, his sister (the marketing person who works for Coke) submits the idea to her boss as her idea, even though it was really her brother's. However, at the time Coke was doing poorly on the stock market and as a company was not doing well, so she left the company soon afterwards, apparently thinking that nothing was going to happen with the Lime Coke thing. Now here it is in 2005, and there's the "Put the Lime in the Coke" commercial and the new Lime Coke, and he says he really regrets it, because he could be making millions. He says he even came up with the song they use in the commerical.
That was the funniest shit I've heard in awhile :biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin:
Later on in class, we got to talking some other stuff like this, like how rappers steal lines that people on the street corners who flow used. We came up with lines from Three 6 Mafia and Ludacris that was used in hit songs by them, that was originally said by somebody here in Birmingham who just flow on the weekends just for fun down in the hood, not like somebody with a record deal or nothing like that. So basically we was like, "it's probably a whole BUNCH of stuff that companies make money off of that other people thought of".
So what's your story? Do you have a story like that? Do you wish you got something patented, have you got something patented?
It didn't happen to me, but our economics teacher today told us a funny story - he was at a family gathering a couple of summers ago and his sister, who works for Coca-Cola in Atlanta, gave everybody the then-new Vanilla Coke to try out and see if everybody liked it. Nobody liked it, but my teacher had said he put some kiwi lime in his, and it made it taste a lot better. Everybody else did the same, and loved the way it tasted. So later on, his sister (the marketing person who works for Coke) submits the idea to her boss as her idea, even though it was really her brother's. However, at the time Coke was doing poorly on the stock market and as a company was not doing well, so she left the company soon afterwards, apparently thinking that nothing was going to happen with the Lime Coke thing. Now here it is in 2005, and there's the "Put the Lime in the Coke" commercial and the new Lime Coke, and he says he really regrets it, because he could be making millions. He says he even came up with the song they use in the commerical.
That was the funniest shit I've heard in awhile :biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin:
Later on in class, we got to talking some other stuff like this, like how rappers steal lines that people on the street corners who flow used. We came up with lines from Three 6 Mafia and Ludacris that was used in hit songs by them, that was originally said by somebody here in Birmingham who just flow on the weekends just for fun down in the hood, not like somebody with a record deal or nothing like that. So basically we was like, "it's probably a whole BUNCH of stuff that companies make money off of that other people thought of".
So what's your story? Do you have a story like that? Do you wish you got something patented, have you got something patented?