When should employees share profits from inventions?
Glucose monitor inventor wins £2m payout from Unilever after claiming his work provided ’outstanding benefit’
In the early 1980s, Ian Shanks was employed by Unilever researching liquid crystal electronics for sensors. He came up with a way of making electrochemical sensors that would eventually be incorporated into glucose monitors for diabetes. He left Unilever a few years later, and in 2006 he began a legal dispute with the company demanding a share of the significant return (around £24 million) that his patents had brought the company. Shanks was rebuffed at every stage of the 13-year fight, before finally winning an appeal at the UK supreme court, which awarded him compensation of £2 million.