Blender battles behemoth: Tom Dickson of 'Will it Blend?' fame wins settlement against Vitamix

OREM — Tom Dickson, the mad blender professor of YouTube fame, is one of those upbeat sorts of people who seem to always be smiling, even if you're not exactly sure why.

But last week, there was no guessing the reason.

On Tuesday, federal judge Tena Campbell ruled in a summary judgment that the Vitamix Corp. of Ohio violated U.S. patent law by copying the blending jar Dickson personally invented.

In early June, a jury trial will be held in Campbell's Salt Lake courtroom to determine damages, which could reach well into eight figures.

The ruling culminates a four-year David vs. Goliath type court battle pitting Dickson's upstart Blendtec company against Vitamix, the dominant name in American blending for nearly a century.

That dominance was threatened by the revolutionary, five-sided blending jar conceived and produced by Dickson, a BYU graduate (class of '71). He is a kind of modern-day Ben Franklin whose inventions also include the world's first motion-sickness patch, a home-friendly grain mill and what the History Channel hailed as "the world's strongest blender."

Dickson's five-sided jar greatly reduces center clogging and dramatically increases blending speed and efficiency. This enables commercial vendors such as Baskin-Robbins and Jamba Juice to make their smoothies and milk shakes in a fraction of the time.

Facing a decidedly competitive disadvantage, Vitamix's engineers studied and dissected Dickson's jar and copied it — and then went to court and said they didn't.

"They tried to bury us with paper," said Dickson of repeated appeals and counter-appeals filed by Vitamix's lawyers over the past four years. "Finally, the judge had seen enough."

Blendtec and Dickson's ability to go toe-to-toe with Vitamix in the expensive legal battle hinged, appropriately enough, on the burgeoning popularity of the blender and five-sided jar in question.

In October 2006, about the same time the legal fight began, Dickson started making his "Will it Blend?" videos.

In case you're not one of the millions who have seen them, in these videos, Dickson dons a white lab coat, stands in front of the camera with a sly grin on his face and asks, "Will it Blend?"

At which point he produces the object du jour and stuffs it into the Blendtec blender.