ROBERT WARREN DILTS

Robert W. Dilts was the father of Robert B. Dilts and co-author of the book Tools for Dreamers (published posthumously in 1991) which explores applications of NLP to creativity. Dilts was involved in patent, copyright and trademark law from 1953 until his death in 1985. He had an engineering degree from Purdue University and a J.D. (with distinction) from Indiana University School of Law. He worked in the patent departments of RCA's David Sarnoff Laboratories, Eimac and Varian Associates before entering into private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. His clients included Caterpillar Tractor, Lockheed and Stanford University. During his career he helped with the preparation of over 500 patents in such diverse areas as electron discharge devices, telecommunications equipment, laser fabrication, microprocessors, fiber optics and musical instruments.As a patent and copyright attorney, Dilts had a long standing interest in the creative process and in determining the deeper structure of creativity, particularly in the area of defining what was truly unique or innovative about a particular idea or invention. He was exposed to NLP through the involvement of his son and was responsible for the legal work establishing intellectual property rights in various aspects of NLP.