The late Jerome Lemelson was the first post-modern inventor. He was granted 558 patents (only four less than Edison) and collected nearly $1.5 billion from 750 companies that license his patents. Yet it's hard to point to any invention of his. One of his former attorneys, Arthur Lieberman, says "In many cases, Lemelson didn't patent inventions. He invented patents." He filed a "machine vision" patent in the 1950s and artfully delayed its issuance for decades by repeatedly amending the application. Then he used it to sue modern day users of bar codes, even though they work entirely differently. With the aid of his lawyers, he played the patent game to perfection.