The Black Flag - 3

The Black Flag - 3

 When the nature of a patent right is considered it is difficult to see why this should be so.

The inventor creates a new thing--an invention of utility--and the people, represented by

the Federal Government, say to him in effect: "Disclose your invention to us in a patent

so that we may know how to practice it, and we will agree to give you a monopoly for

seventeen years, after which we shall be free to use it. If the right thus granted is invaded,

apply to a Federal Court and the infringer will be enjoined and required to settle in

damages." Fair and false promise! Is it generally realized that no matter how flagrant the

infringement nor how barefaced and impudent the infringer, no Federal Court will grant

an injunction UNTIL THE PATENT SHALL HAVE BEEN FIRST LITIGATED TO

FINAL HEARING AND SUSTAINED? A procedure, it may be stated, requiring years of

time and thousands of dollars, during which other infringers have generally entered the

field, and all have grown fat.

Thus Edison and his business associates have been forced into a veritable maelstrom of

litigation during the major part of the last forty years, in the effort to procure for

themselves a small measure of protec- tion for their interests under the numerous

inventions of note that he has made at various times in that period. The earlier years of

his inventive activity, while productive of many important contributions to electrical

industries, such as stock tickers and printers, duplex, quadruplex, and automatic

telegraphs, were not marked by the turmoil of interminable legal conflicts that arose after

the beginning of the telephone and electric-light epochs. In fact, his inventions; up to and

including his telephone improvements (which entered into already existing arts), had

been mostly purchased by the Western Union and other companies, and while there was

more or less contesting of his claims (especially in respect of the telephone), the extent of

such litigation was not so conspicuously great as that which centred subsequently around

his patents covering incandescent electric lighting and power systems.

Through these inventions there came into being an entirely new art, complete in its

practicability evolved by Edison after protracted experiments founded upon most patient,

thorough, and original methods of investigation extending over several years. Long

before attaining the goal, he had realized with characteristic insight the underlying

principles of the great and comprehensive problem he had started out to solve, and

plodded steadily along the path that he had marked out, ignoring the almost universal

scientific disbelief in his ultimate success. "Dreamer," "fool," "boaster" were among the

appellations bestowed upon him by unbelieving critics. Ridicule was heaped upon him in

the public prints, and mathematics were called into service by learned men to settle the

point forever that he was attempting the utterly impossible.

But, presto! no sooner had he accomplished the task and shown concrete results to the

world than he found himself in the anomalous position of being at once surrounded by

the conditions which inevitably confront every inventor. The path through the trackless

forest had been blazed, and now every one could find the way. At the end of the road was

a rich prize belonging rightfully to the man who had opened a way to it, but the struggles

of others to reach it by more or less honest methods now began and continued for many

years. If, as a former commissioner once said, "Edison was the man who kept the path to

the Patent Office hot with his footsteps," there were other great inventors abreast or

immediately on his heels, some, to be sure, with legitimate, original methods and vital

improvements representing independent work; while there were also those who did not

trouble to invent, but simply helped themselves to whatever ideas were available, and

coming from any source.

Possibly events might have happened differently had Edison been able to prevent the

announcement of his electric-light inventions until he was entirely prepared to bring out

the system as a whole, ready for commercial exploitation, but the news of his production

of a practical and successful incandescent lamp became known and spread like wild-fire

to all corners of the globe. It took more than a year after the evolution of the lamp for

Edison to get into position to do actual business, and during that time his laboratory was

the natural Mecca of every inquiring person. Small wonder, then, that when he was

prepared to market his invention he should find others entering that market, at home and

abroad, at the same time, and with substantially similar merchandise.

Edison narrates two incidents that may be taken as characteristic of a good deal that had

to be contended with, coming in the shape of nefarious attack. "In the early days of my

electric light," he says, "curiosity and interest brought a great many people to Menlo Park

to see it. Some of them did not come with the best of intentions. I remember the visit of

one expert, a well-known electrician, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, and who

then represented a Baltimore gas company. We had the lamps exhibited in a large room,

and so arranged on a table as to illustrate the regular layout of circuits for houses and

streets. Sixty of the men employed at the laboratory were used as watchers, each to keep

an eye on a certain section of the exhibit, and see there was no monkeying with it. This

man had a length of insulated No. 10 wire passing through his sleeves and around his

back, so that his hands would conceal the ends and no one would know he had it. His

idea, of course, was to put this wire across the ends of the supplying circuits, and shortcircuit

the whole thing--put it all out of business without being detected. Then he could

report how easily the electric light went out, and a false impression would be conveyed to

the public. He did not know that we had already worked out the safety-fuse, and that

every group of lights was thus protected independently. He put this jumper slyly in

contact with the wires-- and just four lamps went out on the section he tampered with.

The watchers saw him do it, however, and got hold of him and just led him out of the

place with language that made the recording angels jump for their typewriters."