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Patent Appeal: The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in the American Automotive Sector, 1903-1911

2023; Volume: 49; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mhr.2023.a899865

2327-9672

Angella LaNette Smith,

Canadian Identity and History

Patent Appeal:The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in the American Automotive Sector, 1903-1911 Angella LaNette Smith (bio) In 1895, George Baldwin Selden patented an American automobile that utilized an updated Brayton-style engine. The following year, Henry Ford produced and test-drove his Quadricycle in Detroit.1 Selden—a patent attorney from Rochester, New York—was an innovator who, along with Elihu Cutler, Charles L. Clifton, Samuel T. Davis, Henry Joy, and Frederick Smith, helped establish the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM) in 1903. Ford and the coal magnate and entrepreneur Alexander Malcomson were instrumental in the founding of Ford Motor Company that same year, with a market capitalization of twenty-eight thousand dollars.2 John Gray served as the president of Ford until his death in 1906, while John and Horace Dodge played important roles as Ford executives and parts suppliers for the Model A and subsequent vehicles until the mid-1910s.3 From 1903 to 1911, Selden and Ford became bitter adversaries who attempted to leave their industrial imprints on the automotive sector in an intellectual property court case—George B. Selden and the Electric Vehicle C [End Page 99] ompany et al. v. C. A. Duerr & Company et al. The federal case centered on the Selden automobile patent and Henry Ford's 1903 patent for the first rear-axle and rear-wheel drive vehicle that led to the construction of the Model A.4 This case was important because both innovations were some of the first patents for American combination machines containing more than one input and mass-produced in the US automobile industry. The legal battle ended with George Baldwin Selden winning the circuit court case in 1909 followed by a victory for Ford Motor Company and the independents on appeal in 1911. Selden v. Duerr offers an intriguing lens to explore the history of important American legal concepts such as patents, combination inventions, patent reassignments, patent reissues, trade secrets, the public domain or public knowledge, and nonobvious claims—particularly how all of these intersected the American automotive industry during a critical period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Later important legal reforms to the American patent system, in the form of the Patent Act of 1952 and US Supreme Court decisions in 1999 and 2007, clarified the federal judicial interpretations of nonobviousness that had confronted the ALAM and Ford Motor Company. The legal principle of nonobviousness enabled the federal judiciary and US Patent Office to determine the newness, novelty, and uniqueness of an American patent. These subsequent developments can help historians better contextualize and understand the earlier patent struggle that featured George Selden, the ALAM, Henry Ford, and Ford Motor Company. Moreover, Selden and Ford's epic legal battle illustrated the salience of intellectual property rights in the nascent automotive industry.5 Events that led to the establishment of the ALAM shaped the industrial and legal conflicts between the organization and Ford Motor Company. Eventually, patent pooling—or the exchanging and sharing of intellectual property—stabilized the industry and enabled Detroit to become an automobile juggernaut and haven for white- and blue-collar workers laboring intensely for the "Big Three" automobile companies. Patent pooling became an important practice that enabled auto companies to work together and compromise to prevent the eruption of patent infringement lawsuits. After 1880, the American automobile industry was one of the first sectors to manufacture combination products that required legal protections from US patent laws and federal judicial interpretations. The US Supreme Court presided [End Page 100] over many cases to determine when combination products were "synergistic" or "nonobvious."6 Synergistic or nonobvious meant that the innovation was new, novel, and unique. A patent was one form of technology that had intangible components promoting a paradigm shift in the manufacturing industry and substantially revolutionizing the prior art.7 An innovation that was synergistic or nonobvious therefore did more than just improve upon the prior art or older inventions that had become a part of the public domain or public knowledge.8 Article One, Section Eight, of the US Constitution established the foundation for the American patent system, and many subsequent patent laws clarified the concept—beginning...