How Patent Trolls and Insurers Tried To Kill the First Windshield Crack Repair Kit

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How Patent Trolls and Insurers Tried To Kill The First Windshield Crack Repair Kit

Going back, I (Richard Campfield) had started a mobile windshield repair business in Riverside County, California years earlier in October of 1986. Before I purchased a windshield repair kit though I put an ad for windshield repair in the local Pennysaver in order to check out the local market for windshield repair. Of the 21 calls received off the Pennysaver ad, 18 were for cracks and only 3 for chips. It was evident from the get-go that the consumer demand for crack repair far exceeded that for chip repair. Problem was none of the windshield repair kits on the market had offered the technology to repair long cracks. I bought a kit anyway and figured I would figure it out for myself, which I did a few years later. That was when I put the first windshield crack repair kit together, filed for a patent on the process, and put an ad in Entrepreneur Magazine.

 For the first two years, life was bliss. The American Dream had been accomplished in a country born of freedom and free enterprise with laws that protected little guys, small businesses, and competition. By the third year things started getting a little more complicated because direct competitors selling windshield repair kits could not compete with Ultra Bond, so they began copying or falsely advertising they could do what Ultra Bond could do. In order to prevent multiple patent infringement lawsuits, I agreed to a re-examination at the patent office. This allowed multiple competitors to submit declarations and affidavits in an attempt to invalidate the patent on long crack windshield repair.

Re-Examination Patent, Secures Ultra Bond's Future

Big Auto Glass Industry Form NGA To Attack Crack Repair Market

Large auto glass companies, glass manufacturers, and PVB manufacturers formed a committee through the National Glass Association in 1994 attempting to attack the safety of crack repair and to write a new standard to eliminate all professional and DIY windshield crack repair (and almost all chip repairs too). However, attacking the safety of windshield crack repair ended up exploding in the committee's face, as independent lab tests that Ultra Bond had done before all this showed definitively that windshield crack repair passed the same federal standards required of a new windshield. In fact, mechanical strength tests scored higher than new glass, meaning a long crack repair in a windshield actually increased the flexural strength of the windshield.

But this failed attempt did not stop the windshield manufacturers. They then went to the insurance companies and proposed to be their Third Party Administrator (TPA) for their auto glass claims for practically nothing - a blatant conflict of interest that reeked of antitrust, racketeering, and deception, as this would allow windshield manufacturers to interfere with competition and steer repairs into replacements. For the insurance company, this allowed them to eliminate the administrative costs of auto glass claims as well. Administrative costs are not counted toward claim costs and cannot be recouped through insurance premiums, so the consumer saves nothing from insurers saving administrative costs. Insurance companies were finally able to terminate that entire department and hundreds of employees that handled auto glass claims. Those savings were pure profit. These windshield manufacturer TPAs such as Safelite would boycott crack repair, and many of those small businesses making a living with a windshield crack repair kit would be forced into offering windshield replacements instead.

I have been fighting this illegal TPA set up in federal court for years. I have a federal lawsuit filed against Safelite for false and misleading advertising to consumers and insurance companies that a long crack in a windshield cannot be repaired. Now, the inventor who put the first windshield crack repair kit on the market, instead of living the American dream, has had a career in the legal system - hoping and waiting for a judge to uphold the laws that protect free enterprise, competition, and consumers. I have faith that this will happen in the very near future.

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