Independent innovator cheated - case from Sweden

Stefan Hultberg is a Swedish inventor who presented his idea about secure bank identification in 2007. It turned out that it was rather early for his idea, as the concepts of mobile apps and security did not yet go together. In 2010 Stefan made a new attempt. His idea was different, as it built mainly on software development, while the technologies banks were using at the time included sim-cards and sms communications. Stefan's company, Accumulate, started a pilot project together with the banks' jointly owned company, Finansiell id-teknik. Accumulate received some compensation for this pilot project but this was not even sufficient to cover the firm's own costs—they had no less than 15 patents registered for this solution. Stefan Hultberg suggested a licensing model which entailed that each user pay some sort of royalty fee for using the app. The banks did not agree. During this time, Accumulate had had meetings with the banks where details about how the solution worked had been revealed—including details about the source code under the protection of non-disclosure agreements. In autumn 2010 Finansiell id-teknik announced they were not interested in Accumulate's idea and that they would build their own system. Stefan Hultberg claims that this is an identical copy of the system suggested by Accumulate. In 2017 the Swedish Patent and Market Court accused Finansiell id-teknik of patent infringement. 

The lawsuit is on-going.

Where did Swedens Top 100 innovations originate?

This study has investigated how 100 of the most important Swedish innovations have emerged.The results indicate that 47 percent of the top one hundred innovations were created by inventors as employees of companies, while individual inventors and entrepreneurs have contributed 33 percent and university finally accounts for the remaining 20 percent. Companies and individuals often have a combination of technical expertise and market knowledge that allows radical innovations to emerge. Companies often may have a cash flow that sometimes can be used for funding extensive development.
An important conclusion is that the independent inventors' role has become more prominent in recent decades. Of the twenty major innovations during the period 1955-1979 25 percent of those emerged from independent inventors. Of the 20 innovations between years 1981 to 2006 no less than 45 percent came from this category. The independent inventors in other words have become increasingly important in Sweden.
Some important innovations from independent innovators:
The Respirator, Sparkling mineral water, The Screw propeller, The telephone handset, 

(Extract from report, Author Dr. Christian Sandström,
Ratio and Chalmers University of Technology, christian.sandstrom@chalmers.se  )