Vacuum inventor cleans up

A 67-YEAR-OLD British inventor is being paid $30 million by domestic appliance giant Electrolux after claiming it stole his design for an upright, bagless vacuum cleaner.

The Swedish manufacturer quietly announced that it would pay Norwich engineer John North $30m in exchange for his dropping a lawsuit .

North filed the lawsuit in 2002 in El Paso, Texas, and had sought $100m, along with punitive damages, from Electrolux, based on its sales of three million units.