Inventor Settles Ford Suit for $10.2 Million : Autos: The creator of intermittent windshield wipers still plans to pursue patent-infringement suits against 19 other companies.

DETROIT — The inventor of intermittent windshield wipers ended a 12-year-old patent-infringement lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday by accepting $10.2 million from the auto maker.

A Ford attorney called the settlement “extremely reasonable,” adding that the agreement resolved all disputes between the company and 63-year-old inventor Robert Kearns.

Kearns had sued 19 other auto makers, claiming that they violated his patent on intermittent windshield wipers--the kind that operate at intervals and are now standard or optional on nearly all cars sold in the United States.

Kearns and his attorney said they still plan to pursue their suits against all the auto makers. Chrysler Corp. may be the next defendant up for trial, but a Chrysler spokesman indicated that his company may be willing to settle.

“Because of the Ford settlement, we’re encouraged that we will probably be able to reach agreement with Mr. Kearns without extended litigation,” Chrysler spokesman Tom Houston said Wednesday.

“We’re pleased to be done with the litigation,” said Ford attorney Malcolm Wheeler. “We still believe that if we had another shot at it, the patents would have been held invalid.”

“I don’t think the goal was the magnitude of the money,” Kearns said after signing the settlement in U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn’s courtroom. “What I saw (as) my role was to defend the patent system. If I don’t go further, there really isn’t a patent system.”

Bill Durkee, one of Kearns’ attorneys, said Chrysler probably would be the next legal target. Chrysler, Durkee said, has agreed not to contest the validity of Kearns’ patents, an argument that took up time in the Ford trial.

Durkee said the settlement, of which his firm is expected to get 30% to 40%, was a good deal for Ford.

“I think Ford got away with more than they should,” Durkee said Wednesday. “They made a profit from their infringement.”

Dealers have sold an estimated 20 million Ford, Lincoln and Mercury cars equipped with intermittent wipers. After legal defense costs, the settlement nets Kearns 33 cents per car.

If the Ford settlement pattern were followed with Chrysler’s estimated 13 million cars with intermittent wipers, it would work out to about $4.3 million without legal fees.

Kearns, a former Gaithersburg, Md., resident who now lives in a rented apartment in Houston, filed the suit claiming that he installed a set of intermittent windshield wipers on a 1962 Ford Galaxie and took it to the auto maker.

Kearns, who was a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit at the time, said he was led to believe that Ford would buy his invention by the number of questions engineers asked.

When that failed to happen, he sued.

Four law firms have represented him during the course of the litigation. One mistrial was declared after a jury was unable to decide on an award. During a retrial, Kearns left Cohn’s courtroom after writing an angry letter to the judge and disappeared for several days.

Now, with the settlement money due in an escrow account by the end of the week, Kearns said he plans to pay off some legal debts and, perhaps, buy a house in Texas. And he’ll continue the legal battles to protect his patent.

“They (lawyers) are running a business,” he said. “I’m running a cause.”