Inventor Wins $24.8 Million in Patent Suit Against Mattel : Litigation: A jury has decided the track used with the popular ‘Hot Wheels’ toys smacks of the tinkerer’s design. His award could be tripled.

A prolific inventor who has spent more than a decade proving toys aren’t all fun and games has been awarded millions of dollars by a federal jury, which said toy giant Mattel Inc. infringed on his patent with its popular “Hot Wheels.”

“I am floating on cloud nine,” 66-year-old Jerome Lemelson said Friday, a day after the judgment. “My hope is that as a result of it, toy inventors will get a fair shake from the industry.”

The jury awarded Lemelson $24.8 million in damages after finding earlier in the week that Mattel willfully infringed on his patent, a flexible plastic race track on which the tiny metal Hot Wheels cars run.

That amount could be increased substantially by U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras, who has the discretion under federal law to triple the award and to determine the amount of interest Mattel must pay. A final ruling from Kocoras is due within the next few weeks, Lemelson’s attorneys said.

In any case, Hawthorne-based Mattel said it is confident that it will overturn the judgment on appeal.

“There are differences in Mattel’s track from the patent,” said company spokesman Glenn Bozarth. He added that Mattel came out with a similar product before any patent was issued.

Sales of Hot Wheels, which glide on flexible tracks, ramps, jumps and loops, and accessories totaled $545 million between 1972 and 1986. Only 6% of that amount represented race track sales, Bozarth said.

He said the judgment, however, appears to apply a 5% royalty against sales for the entire Hot Wheels product line--an issue that will be raised in Mattel’s appeal.

Hot Wheels is Mattel’s most popular offering after Barbie dolls.

Lemelson, a self-described “tinkerer,” has spent his life putting creative ideas into action, and has more than 400 inventions to his credit.

Working out of an office in his Princeton, N.J., home, Lemelson has invented everything from parts for fighter planes to inflatable children’s equipment. His latest creation--a “talking thermometer” for the blind--is due on the market later this year, he said Friday.

Lemelson sued Mattel in 1977 in Chicago, selected for the reputation of its circuit court for finding in favor of inventors.

Lemelson said he filed papers on his creation with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the mid-1960s, some time before Mattel’s 1968 introduction of Hot Wheels.

Mattel attorneys had argued the company’s Hot Wheels differed conceptually from Lemelson’s 1969 patent and were developed independently.

On Thursday, Mattel attorney Sheldon Karon urged Kocoras to limit additional damages and interest.

“This man is entitled to be compensated for his damage, not to be given a windfall,” said Karon. He argued that the track is a minimal part of the system.

But Lemelson’s attorney, Gerald Hosier, argued that no one bought the cars “to run on a floor or the dirt but on the track way.” Lemelson, he said, should receive a just portion of Mattel’s “astronomical sales.”

Lemelson’s attorneys said they would seek to have $43.3 million in interest added to the award.