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`The beautiful mind of the Aussie who beat Microsoft
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`Published: August 10, 2011 - 11:01AM
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`The phone rang early, rousing Ric Richardson from a fitful sleep. As the sun rose over the northern NSW coast, he sat
`on his verandah and absorbed the news that a jury on the other side of the world had awarded him half a billion
`dollars. "I didn't really feel like celebrating," he remembers. "I just felt like breathing for a while."
`
`Richardson is the Australian inventor who took on Microsoft and won. In April 2009, a United States court found the
`giant software corporation had used his technology without his knowledge or permission, and ordered Microsoft to pay
`compensation of $US388 million (then worth more than $530 million). The award was one of the highest in US patent
`history.
`
`As it turned out, Richardson was right to keep the cork in the champagne bottle - the verdict was overturned five
`months later. But early this year, an appeals court upheld the original jury's decision that Microsoft had infringed his
`patent. He was vindicated, though still didn't feel like throwing a party. "I was just very relieved," he says.
`
`Richardson, 49, has a friendly, round face, dark-rimmed glasses and blue eyes. Friends and colleagues speak in awe of
`his prodigious intelligence but the sheer size of him is what you notice first - his nimble brain is trapped inside a
`lumbering body that tips the scales at close to 180 kilograms. When we meet at a smart Byron Bay resort, he is wearing
`a navy T-shirt so enonnous it could probably accommodate Bill Gates and the entire Microsoft board. While he talks,
`he perches on the edge of his seat, as if afraid his full weight might be too much for it. Though gregarious and good-
`humoured, he has the slightly apologetic air of one who knows he takes up more space than he should.
`
`We order coffee. When it arrives, Richardson glances at his cup in mild surprise - he asked for a cappuccino and this is
`a long black. "It's all right," he tells the waitress. "No worries."
`
`A few minutes later, she returns with a froth-covered replacement and plonks it on the table. "I'm sure you said long
`black," she says coolly.
`
`"No worries," he repeats, beaming with gratitude. "Thank you."
`
`The innovation that prompted the legal battle is an elegant method of deterring software piracy - essentially, a system
`of locking software titles to individual machines so they can't be illegally copied. But Richardson isn't just a computer
`geek: over the years, he has produced blueprints for everything from optical-fibre fingerprinting to a home-based
`hydro-electric scheme and a toothpaste tube that can be squeezed to the last drop. A problem-solver, he likes to call
`himself. "Because that's what invention is. Solving a problem before everybody else."
`
`The Microsoft saga isn't over yet. The appeals court ruled that the jury had erred in calculating the damages payment,
`so a new trial will decide the amount due to Richardson and Uniloc, the company he founded. But he says he isn't
`hanging on that result. "The fact that they have been found guilty is the most important thing from my perspective. A
`lot of people think this is all about some big settlement, but no, it isn't. This case was about a lot more than money."
`
`Besides, he and his wife, Karen, are hardly big spenders. Even when the half-billion was in the offing, their most
`extravagant purchase was a new hen house for the rural block they rent in the Byron Bay hinterland. Their five pet
`chooks - Blanche, Hilda, Edie, Bev and Noddy - now have fancy premises close to the converted stable that serves as
`Richardson's office. Perhaps too close.
`
`When I visit, he admits that since he moved to the country, creative solitude has been harder to find than he expected.
`The stable's former occupant, a horse called Oscar, keeps sticking his head in the window and watching him work. If
`the door is left open, the hens wander in. Once, during a conference call to a roomful of lawyers in Boston, he realised
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`the line had gone very quiet. "I'm thinking I must have lost the connection. I said, ‘Hi, guys. Are you there?‘ " In
`response, an American voice asked hesitantly if that was clucking they could hear in the background.
`
`When Richardson is immersed in a project that requires total concentration, he squeezes behind the wheel of his
`second-hand Ford Transit van and rattles along rural lanes until he finds a secluded spot. Then he parks under a tree,
`climbs into the back and lets his grey cells go to work. "It's not real homey," he says of his mobile thinktank. "Just a
`desk and a chair." But that's fine with him - more than fine. The whole point of the exercise is to get away from
`distractions. No personal paraphernalia, no people and no poultry. Perfect.
`
`Richardson grew up in Sydney, the eldest son of a Four Comers cameraman who also worked as a stringer for ABC
`news. From the age of about 10, he was pressed into service as his father's assistant and sound recordist, leaping out of
`bed in the small hours to help load equipment into the station wagon before racing off with him to fires, car crashes
`and other disasters. He loved it. Apart from the adrenalin rush, there was the satisfaction of walking into the newsroom
`with a story in the can and the knowledge that his contribution had been useful.
`
`Richardson sometimes thinks modern children could do with less cosseting and more exposure to the real world. "It's
`so fantastic when you are around adults who let you be a kid but also take you seriously," he says. "Looking back, it
`gives you tremendous confidence."
`
`Moonlighting as a news hound meant he missed quite a bit of school, which didn't bother anyone unduly. "Our family
`was very much self-educating," he says. When he was 12, his parents took him and his younger brother on a year-long
`overseas holiday. Before his final exams at 18, he and his father spent several months making a documentary in
`Western Australia. Nevertheless, he graduated from Sydney's Hunters Hill High with good marks.
`
`"He was always thinking so many steps ahead of everybody else," says musician Steve Cox, who has been a close
`friend since both were teenagers. Cox had just migrated from the US when they met, and vividly recalls the warmth of
`Richardson's welcome. "He was really outgoing and just so Australian in a Steve Irwin type of way: ‘How ya going,
`mate?‘ It was almost more than I could handle at the time. Because he was always big - twice the size of everybody else
`- with bright blue eyes and this crazy haircut. One of those bowl cuts
`I think his mum used to cut their hair."
`
`Richardson still has a knockabout manner and accent. When testifying at one of the Microsoft hearings, he jokingly
`asked examiners from the US patent office if they needed an interpreter. But the truth is, flat vowels aren't the reason
`he sometimes has difficulty getting his message across. When he listens to recordings of himself, he is dismayed by his
`tendency to leap from one subject to another, leaving out words and skipping over connecting sentences. "When your
`mind is working really fast, you've got to stop and pronounce things properly because you don't explain yourself
`clearly," he says. "When I get excited, I become quite incoherent."
`
`He looks at me. "Have you sensed it a bit when we've been talking?"
`
`Richardson's conversation can occasionally be a little hard to follow, if only because some of his subject matter is so
`esoteric. At one point, he tries to explain Logarex logarithmic compression, which he describes on his website as a new
`data-compression method "based on numeric reduction of number string lengths using conversion of data to numerics
`and then to a series of logarithms that in turn represent a shorter (i.e. compressed) representation of the original
`number".
`
`Huh? What I manage to glean is he has patented the concept, which he believes has the potential to transform the
`computer industry by reducing the size of stored digital data by up to 98 per cent.
`
`He knows many are sceptical. "I've had all kinds of mathematicians and other experts telling me that it might be
`possible, but not in my lifetime," he says. People told the Wright brothers the same thing about their flying machine,
`of course, but Richardson admits Logarex is a huge challenge. "Whenever I get into it, I end up having days of
`migraines. It's very hard to do."
`
`The American inventor Thomas Edison described genius as one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. For
`Richardson, though, there is relatively little sweating over the drawing board - his big ideas tend to come to him
`speedily, slipping into his consciousness when least expected. Karen suggests this is because her husband's brain never
`stops ticking over. "He can't help himself," she says. "He invents in his sleep."
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`It sometimes seems to her that he exists on a different plane: "He doesn't get the physical realm. He lives in his head."
`Many practical, day-to-day details elude him. "He actually looks bewildered about things a lot of the time. Like, where
`to get a water glass."
`
`Karen, 45, is a warm and exuberant person, as earthy as Richardson is cerebral. "There was a point there," he says,
`"when Kaz would make fun of me for being, you know, a nutty professor." But on the whole, they have happily put up
`with one another's foibles since they met 15 years ago, when he gave her a lift to a mutual friend's party. "He's unusual
`and intense but we get on really well," says Karen, who is the animal lover in the partnership. When she phones from
`Richardson's office one afternoon, we end up chatting about chooks - specifically, their high fatality rate. Pythons and
`the dog next door have accounted for 10 of her brood, among them such favourites as Joyce, Dot, Fay and Nancy. "I
`always bury them in the vegetable garden or somewhere they'll be useful," she says. "Unless, of course, they're in the
`python's stomach. Then off they go with the python."
`
`Karen is the first to admit that theirs is not a conventional household. "It's like a circus here, with the pets," she says,
`pointing out that Oscar the horse sometimes ambles into the kitchen and helps himself from the fruit bowl. Richardson
`once woke to find a hen staring him in the face. "He puts up with a lot," she says of her husband. "He's a very likeable
`man, very genuine." A pause. "Here comes the horse. I'll just open the window - he wants to say something. Hello,
`Oscar! You big sausage!"
`
`For much of Richardson's youth, he basically wanted to be Jimi Hendrix. Years of obsessive practice turned him into
`a more than competent electric guitarist - but "I could never get his loosey-goosey feel", he says, still a bit crestfallen.
`"I was too uptight and Caucasian for that." Since he couldn't be a thin, black rock god and had no alternative career in
`mind, nor any interest in going to university, he spent a while drifting between casual jobs: window washing, garbage
`collecting, guitar teaching. Then in 1982, when he was 20, he got his hands on a Commodore 64, one of the
`newfangled home computers. And everything fell into place.
`
`Before long, he was one of Australia's leading computer music specialists, working with bands such as INXS and
`Mental as Anything. He moved into software distribution with his old friend Steve Cox, and mulled over ways to
`improve the sales system. What if partially disabled "demo" software could be switched into fully functioning mode
`when the user phoned to pay for it? Come to that, what if the software could be deactivated again if illegally copied to
`another computer? "You should be able to turn it on and off," he remembers thinking. "So how do you do that?"
`
`He already had two inventions under his belt: the Shadesavers sunglasses cord, dreamed up and sold by him and his
`brother, and an extendable pole for washing apartment-block windows. The new project was obviously more
`complicated but he threw himself into it with gusto. "He wasn't a programmer but he had a fantastic mind for
`connecting the dots," says Cox, who watched in amazement as Richardson worked day and night, filling a whiteboard
`and reams of drawing paper with scribbled arrows and diagrams. "He was saying, ‘We can do this and this and this!’
`And within a week or two, the thing was fleshed out."
`
`Richardson was confident he was onto something big: "I knew it could change the software industry." Still, he
`hesitated about applying for a patent. "I thought, ‘Am I really going to go out there and try to prove I'm the only guy
`in the world who's ever done this?’ " In the end, he decided he had little choice. "I didn't want to look back in 10 years
`and say, ‘What a gutless nong, not having a go.’ "
`
`His software-activation system was patented in 1992 and immediately attracted interest. "There were a few offers of
`several million to buy the idea outright at the beginning," says Cox, then a partner in the venture, "but he never really
`considered that at all. He's never been in it for the money. I think he's always been in it for the excitement of getting
`an idea out there and seeing it work."
`
`Richardson wanted to develop and market the technology, so he set up Uniloc and went looking for financial backing.
`Cox says he disarmed corporate types with his sincerity and enthusiasm. "They could see that he was just a really good
`guy. That got him in a lot of doors." But the enterprise stalled in Australia, and in 1997 Richardson decided to try his
`luck in the US, moving to California with his new wife Karen and her seven-year-old daughter, Lily.
`
`According to Cox, who had opted out by then, it was a case of do or die: "When Ric went to Los Angeles, he had a lot
`of personal debt because he had thrown everything into it. His family had thrown a lot of their life savings into it,
`too." Richardson says he and Karen were so skint they flew to LA via Manila and Seoul, taking twice as long as
`necessary, in order to save $300 on airfares.
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`The gamble paid off. Within a few years, he had secured major new investors and built Uniloc into a substantial
`business, with dozens of employees and impressive headquarters. The trouble was, he didn't really enjoy running the
`company; more than anything, he wanted to be left alone to invent. So he started spending more time at home and less
`in the CEO's suite. "This is so typical," Cox says. "He had 40 people working in the big glass tower down the road but
`his office was in his garage. Which he'd set up as, you know, a lab."
`
`In Australia, Richardson had been an outdoors person - he enjoyed swimming, riding dirt bikes, playing tennis.
`Though nowhere near sylphlike, he managed to stay about 125 kilograms. In the US, he exercised less, ate more - and
`ballooned. "The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around," said Thomas Edison. But Richardson's body
`became so bloated he couldn't walk without puffing. His health eventually deteriorated to the point where he knew he
`had to do something.
`
`Karen was heartily sick of Los Angeles - the materialism, the superficiality, the smog, the general hideousness. And
`Uniloc was firmly on its feet, no longer requiring Richardson's presence. So in late 2008, they packed their bags and
`came home.
`
`Okay, he hasn't lost much weight, but Richardson has good intentions. "The whole idea is to get back into healthy
`living," he says, outlining his plan to start surfing each morning as soon as he has had laser surgery on his eyes. His
`vision is so poor - he blames computer screens - that he can't tell where waves are going to break. "And if you're in the
`wrong place, you just look like a dork. I keep getting left behind."
`
`One of his close friends is Herb Elliott, chairman of Fortescue Metals Group and one-time world champion runner.
`While Richardson envies Elliott's slim build ("He's a gazelle! "), Elliott marvels at his big mate's mental agility. The
`former athlete says that when he and his wife bought a new car, they got a puncture in the first week. "But there was
`no light to tell us we had a flat tyre until it was right down to the rims. We just happened to mention this to Ric: ‘Isn't
`it ridiculous when you've got a car with all the mod cons but it doesn't tell you your tyre‘s deflating?‘ "
`
`Next thing he knew, Richardson had come up with a simple system of alerting drivers to a loss of tyre pressure without
`the need for electronic sensors. Elliott was so impressed that he arranged for Richardson to go to Western Australia to
`cast his eye over Fortescue's vast iron-ore-mining operation. Sure enough, he came back with a plan to boost its
`efficiency: a roll-on roll-off "rail-trucker" network in which ore-carrying trucks would effectively double as light-rail
`vehicles. "A very interesting concept," says Elliott. "If it works, it would save a huge amount of money and wear and
`tear on trucks. So yes, we're very interested in that."
`
`When not advising Fortescue or absorbed in his own projects, Richardson helps other inventors. Apart from
`establishing a website to put them in touch with investors and marketers, he is negotiating to produce a TV program
`that would be less like the ABC's New Inventors than a tinkerer's version of Antiques Roadshow - people would bring
`inventions, rather than family heirlooms, for appraisal.
`
`Although he retired as Uniloc chairman soon after returning to Australia, he still owns more than 10 per cent of the
`company. And Uniloc is on the warpath - since the initial victory over Microsoft, it has sued more than 100 software
`makers for unauthorised use of its anti-piracy system, among them Sony America, Activision Blizzard and Adobe
`Systems. Richardson says about 25 so far have settled and struck licensing deals. (The patent expires in 2013.)
`
`Bill Gates's company had the chance to buy a licence 14 years ago, when first shown the Uniloc software. It was after
`Microsoft declined, then introduced a remarkably similar anti-piracy system, that Richardson alleged his patent had
`been infringed. In the Sydney office of law firm Clayton Utz, partner Jim Fitzsimons says intellectual-property
`specialists are waiting with interest to see how much the revised damages payment differs from the original $US388
`million. "The betting is the number will be much smaller," says FitzSimons, who is a friend of Richardson's and the
`person who convinced him to patent the technology in the first place. "That may be the case or it may in fact be a
`larger number." Either way, he doubts the inventor will make many changes to his life: "I don't think he fancies
`himself on a yacht pulling into Monaco or anything like that."
`
`Richardson confirms he has no grand plans: "We're just hoping it's going to be enough that we get to give a chunk
`away. We've set a limit on what we would take for ourselves. There are better things to be doing with money than
`upping your lifestyle." Karen hopes to buy some cleared land and replant it with trees. "Then I'd like to help lower-
`income friends by putting them on the land as caretakers. They could live there rent-free."
`
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`On a more frivolous note, she might take the opportunity to decorate the hen house. "I was going to put curtains in it
`and paint it, put a fake TV in there," she says. Nothing wrong with upping the chooks‘ lifestyle, surely.
`
`This article first appeared in Good Weekend.
`
`This story was fimnd at.‘ hnp://$vww.smh.cam.au/technalagyflechnolagy-news/the-beautlful-mind-aflthe-aussie-wh0-beat-micr0s0fl-
`20110810-1ilm6.html
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