Selden patent

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George B. Selden in a replica of his Road Engine from 1877. The photo was taken in 1906 in connection with the Selden Trial

The so-called Selden patent ( US Patent Office No. 549.160) was filed by George Baldwin Selden in 1879 and issued on November 5, 1895. It concerns a Selden Road Engine or Road Wagon called motor vehicle, which the patent attorney and inventor George Baldwin Selden designed in the years 1877 to 1878 and is based on its construction plans, a description and photographs of a model. It was only in the course of the Selden Trials in 1902 and 1907 that a copy of the Road engine was created . Although Selden made individual improvements, all the important components of the vehicle were known at the time of the patent application. He saw the value of his invention in its arrangement as an automobile and patent no. 549.160 as universally applicable to all vehicles with internal combustion engines. From this he and the later patent owners derived their license claims. The subsequent patent dispute had negative effects on the early US auto industry and was followed with great interest on both sides thanks to a lot of media coverage and aggressive and modern communication strategies.

The patent itself remained valid during its entire term, even if after the judgment against Henry Ford in the second instance it was only so limited that it was no longer of any economic importance.

George Baldwin Selden

George Baldwin Selden around 1871.

George Baldwin Selden (1846–1922) was a son of the prominent judge and lawyer Henry Rogers Selden (1805–1885) and Laura Anne Baldwin and was himself a patent attorney. He had already taken technical courses during his studies. In 1878 he opened a law firm in New York . In his free time he tinkered with technical problems and designed a typewriter and a machine for the production of barrel hoops , which he presented at the world exhibition in Philadelphia (from May 10th to November 10th, 1896). Here he got to the novel gas engine of George Brayton know, the compact seemed enough to drive a motor vehicle.

Selden Road Engine (1877)

George B. Brayton (1830-1892)

According to his own statements, this prompted him to design a road vehicle called a road engine in 1877, 12 years before the designs by Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler . Without having completed it, he applied for a patent on May 12, 1879. One of the two signing witnesses to the patent application was George Eastman , an office neighbor whom Selden was also advising on patent law at the time.

Selden's work to improve the Brayton engine was an important contribution to the development of the internal combustion engine. He managed to make the Brayton engine lighter and simpler. Its construction was a three cylinder with a pneumatic pump at each end of a cylinder.

In December 1877 he brought his plans to Frank Clement's mechanical workshop in Rochester. At least initially, only one of the cylinders in the mold was actually drilled out and made functional.

In May 1878 the engine was running, but not satisfactorily. With a weight of 380 lbs (172.4 kg) it developed 2 bhp (1.4 kW). At least Selden now had an internal combustion engine that was light enough for a road vehicle.

The vehicle itself was only recreated many years later on the basis of the patent drawings and a model. Two vehicles were produced, both directly related to the trial of Henry Ford and his group. Selden and his sons produced one using the original engine, while the other was made under the supervision of Pope chief engineer Hiram Percy Maxim at the Electric Vehicle Company .

technology

Brayton engine .
The Selden improved Brayton engine of the Selden Road Engine .
Patent drawing of the Selden Road engine (1877).

The road engine had an internal combustion engine designed according to the principles of George Brayton (1830-1892). This two-stroke engine does not need a spark plug and is a forerunner of the diesel engine . The engine was mounted above the front axle and turned with the steering. Experts tend to believe that this vehicle must not only have been very difficult to steer, but also otherwise could not function properly.

Description and scope of the patent

Selden was far-sighted enough to apply for a patent for his invention as early as May 8, 1879. It was also foresighted that he himself repeatedly delayed its entry into force by submitting changes and entries. The aim was to achieve the full effectiveness of patent protection only when a corresponding industry developed and demand for motor vehicles had formed.

The patent application pertains to a “safe, simple and cheap road locomotive, light in weight, easy to control and powerful enough to conquer any incline.” It includes a technical description of the Selden Road Engine (sometimes called the Road Wagon ) on something over two pages and three construction plans as well as photos of a specially made model. The motion and plans were signed by Selden and two witnesses, WM Rebasz, Jr. (the draftsman on behalf of Selden) and photography pioneer George Eastman , whom Selden was acquainted with because their offices were in the same building. The model with the dimensions 19.05 × 16.51 × 27.94 cm³ has been preserved, but was considered lost for a long time.

While the vehicle was described in detail in the patent application - a prerequisite for the granting - the six individual applications were worded very generally.

  1. The vehicle as a combination of various (already known) components for the transport of people and goods.
  2. The vehicle as a combination of various (already known) components with a flexible or permanently connected body above the chassis
  3. The vehicle as a combination of various (already known) components with a flexible and detachable connection between engine and vehicle (transmission)
  4. The vehicle as a combination of various (already known) components with a steering device
  5. The vehicle as a combination of various (already known) components with a compression engine powered by liquid hydrocarbon
  6. The vehicle as a combination of various (already known) components with a power transmission

The claim was thus divided into six groups, of which, in the opinion of the critics even in 1879, not one was really new in itself. However, the patent office recognized their use in this context as worthy of protection: a car with fuselage machinery and steering, a lever mechanism, motor and gearbox. Everything together resulted in a "combination patent" that covered every motor vehicle powered by a combustion engine, regardless of whether the engine was mounted in the front (as in Selden), in the middle or in the rear, whether the vehicle had three or four wheels and how they were driven or steered. Electric and steam vehicles were excluded, although they work on the same principle, only the drive energy is generated in a different way.

History of the patent specification

The United States Patent Office in Washington, DC around 1880. The building is now used by the Smithsonian Institute .

Selden himself repeatedly delayed the coming into force of his patent. Like many other lawyers, he also made use of a loophole in the law that had existed since 1847: he legally used a two-year period in order to react to the authorities' actions. He added amendments and correspondence several times, which resulted in the same delay.

The purpose of this endeavor was to have the patent come into effect at a time that promised optimal effectiveness. Selden did not want to use the patent as a competitive advantage for its own motor vehicle production, but rather to make profits from the license income. These were to be raised by companies that wanted to market a motor vehicle with an internal combustion engine in the USA. Selden's simple calculation was: the higher the turnover in automobiles and the more manufacturers were active, the higher the license fees to be expected. In the 1880s and early 1890s, the time was clearly not ripe for this. Very few motor vehicles were built during this period; the first automobile to be officially sold in the USA, a Duryea , changed hands in 1893. Selden therefore correctly speculated that an enormous market was emerging. The better he reconciled the validity of his patent with this market development, the more he benefited. If the patent came into force too early, the effect would fizzle out; if he filed it too late, he risked another patent being preferred.

Chronology of the procrastination

May 8, 1879 Application for a patent
May 26, 1879 Withdrawal of registration
May 26, 1881 modification
June 17, 1881 Withdrawal of registration
May 15, 1883 modification
May 26, 1883 Withdrawal of registration
May 18, 1885 modification
June 15, 1885 Correspondence
June 15, 1887 modification
June 21, 1887 Withdrawal of registration
June 10, 1889 modification
June 14, 1889 Write
June 5, 1891 New specifications
July 1, 1891 Write
June 28, 1893 New oath
July 29, 1893 Withdrawal of registration
April 1, 1895 modification
April 29, 1895 Write
May 28, 1895 Notification of

the recognition

October 12, 1895 Closing fee paid
November 5, 1895 Patent issued

How deliberately Selden used the law of the time is shown in the list opposite.

Selden let 16 years elapse between the application for the patent and its recognition by the patent office; After this notification he waited another six months to pay the registration fee. From the above compilation it can be seen that the Office took a maximum of 31 days to respond to Selden's submissions. In other words: In the 16½ years that the proceedings lasted, the files were with Selden for 15 years and 11 months.

This was possible because the law granted the applicant the aforementioned response period of two years. The Selden patent wasn't the only such case of legal time drag, but it was one of the most serious. The patent office was well aware of the deficiency. At the end of 1894, the Commissioner of Patents became active after an investigation had shown that of 50,507 pending applications, around 12,000 had not been conclusively dealt with for two to five years. Of these, five had been open for over 15 years, and the Selden patent was one of them.

On April 15, 1895, stricter implementing provisions came into force. The office could not override the statutory two-year period for processing pending applications, but it could now request a reason for delays and reject the application if this did not materialize or was unsatisfactory.

The threat of a possible suspension of the test procedure was effective. By the end of 1895, 6,859 old applications had been processed, including that of Selden. As early as May 28, 1895, the patent office was able to give him recognition of the patent. After the fees had been paid - not until mid-October 1895 - the patent number 549,160 was finally issued on November 5, 1895.

U.S. Patent 549,160

The Selden Road engine on a drawing for patent 549,160 (1895).

It appears that while the proceedings were pending, Selden was making every effort to interest investors in the manufacture of the Road Engine . The fact that he did not find any could initially have been an additional reason for his delayed patent processing. At the beginning of the 1890s, however, the conditions changed. Now other inventors and designers appeared with ideas that significantly improved the automobile, such as Charles B. King (1868–1957), the brothers Charles E. (1861–1938) and J. Frank Duryea (1869–1967), Elwood Haynes (1857–1925), Henry Ford (1863–1947) or Alexander Winton (1860–1932). In Europe, thanks to better framework conditions, development was already significantly further advanced.

At the time when Selden filed his patent application, the Brayton engine seemed to promise the solution to the propulsion problem. After it had been expected in the meantime that the electric drive would prevail if it were only possible to develop a suitably powerful battery (a view that is modern again today), things looked different in 1895: Now the combustion engine , steam engine and electric drive competed with each other without it was a clear favorite. Each system had its advantages and disadvantages. Among the internal combustion engines, however, the Otto engine had already established itself and the Brayton engine played no economic role.

Nevertheless, the Commissioner of Patents , John S. Seymour , in the Patent Office's annual report of 1895 considered it "a pioneering invention in the use of pressurized gas engines on the road or in horseless vehicles". Those who actually built motor vehicles saw it very differently. The publication of the patent in the journal Horseless Age attracted little attention; the paper drew the correct conclusion that there could be no basic patent for a motor vehicle based on a hydrocarbon- powered engine. The issuance itself did not cause a lot of waves and the potential licensees did not stand in line. One of the few interested in a license was Alexander Winton . He paid US $ 25 for the option to build cars under the Selden patent for 90 days, but never took it. Selden's calculation, however, worked: as early as 1899, the number of motor vehicles manufactured in the USA was estimated at 2500, and many of them were potential licensees.

The Selden Road Engine

Gallery: US automobiles of the 1890s

The consequences of the patent

William C. Whitney (1841-1904)
Colonel Albert Augustus Pope (1843–1909)

The buyer of the patent was a company with a badly tarnished reputation. Behind the Electric Vehicle Company (EVC) in Hartford (Connecticut) stood a powerful cartel around William Collins Whitney (1841-1904), a Wall Street magnate and former Secretary of the Navy (1885-1889), Wall Street investor Anthony F Brady and the industrialist Albert Augustus Pope (1843–1909). The latter had founded a bicycle empire with his Pope Manufacturing Company and was now in the process of building the first automobile company in the USA. Whitney and Brady in particular were seen as monopolists who had previously invested in local public transport with the aim of monopolizing them by crowding out or taking over local tram companies. Similar maneuvers had been attempted on the taxi market with the EVC. They failed because the electric taxi couldn't prevail. It was hoped that the acquisition of the patent would provide a source of income for the heavily indebted company and it was only later that they realized which instrument of power they were holding in their hands. Accordingly, from the beginning there were negative voices and bitter resistance to the patent and its exploitation. The trade press was among the sharpest critics, above all the influential The Horseless Age . The manufacturers of relevant vehicles saw the development as a threat. The automotive industry was only just beginning to develop and it was unclear what the dominant type of drive would be. In 1904, vehicles with gasoline, steam and electric drives were advertised and marketed equally. If the internal combustion engine were to prevail, the holders of the patent would not only be able to make huge profits, but also have the opportunity to influence the market in their favor and to displace competitors from it.

From 1900 onwards, EVC began suing manufacturers of motor vehicles. It managed to win over important vehicle manufacturers by transferring the patent exploitation to the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM), which was founded for this purpose . The licensees had a say in this. The ALAM became a powerful and feared lobbying organization for the motor vehicle industry. She led several lawsuits that went down in automotive history as the Selden patent dispute . The most important and longest led the ALAM against Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company , which were sued in 1903.

At the height of its power, the ALAM represented 87% of the relevant manufacturers. Among the licensees in 1910 were Buick , Cadillac , Franklin , Hudson , Hupmobile , Mack , Oldsmobile , Packard and Studebaker .

Contrary to what is often rumored, US Patent No. 549,160, issued on November 5, 1895, always retained its validity; a judgment against Henry Ford in January 1907 confirmed it in full. After that, the resistance to the ALAM largely collapsed and Ford was practically alone. Nevertheless, he appealed. With his argument, not to question the legitimacy of the patent, but its applicability to all vehicles with internal combustion engines, he penetrated. The court limited its validity to vehicles with a Brayton engine. Because not a single motor vehicle with such a drive was offered on the market with good reason, the patent was de facto worthless. This removed an obstacle for the motor vehicle industry. The process also led to an initial agreement on the mutual use of patents (“ cross-licensing ”).

criticism

The historian William Greenleaf wrote in his book about the Selden patent as early as 1955:

«There is no doubt that in 1895 the Selden automobile was obsolete. The patent disclosed nothing that pushed forward the frontiers of technology. In its details, the Selden structure was inferior to the horseless carriages made by automotive pioneers after 1885. But, as the creation of a patent lawyer, the Selden car was an almost impeccable legal invention. […] »
Translated: «There is no doubt that the Selden automobile in 1895 was obsolete. The patent did not disclose anything that would have pushed the boundaries of the technology. In terms of its details, the Selden structure was inferior to the horseless vehicles built by automobile pioneers after 1885. As the work of a patent attorney, however, it was an almost flawless legal invention. "

Remarks

  1. ↑ The first patent law in the USA from 1830 did not provide for any processing time for the applicant. The two-year deadline was introduced in 1870, but could not remedy the problem because there was no limit to the number of edits and the deadline was valid every time. The Commissioner of Patents had already taken precautions in 1887 after the widespread patent procrastination was recognized as a problem. It was not until 1897 that the processing period was legally reduced to one year (Greenleaf, pp. 40–41).
  2. ↑ The patent office applied the new rule cautiously, also knowing that it might not hold up in court. In 1893, a federal court ruled in a similar case that the only time the time limit would not apply in a case of fraud. It was about the postponement of an application from the Bell Telephone Company , which had acquired a patent from Emil Berliner in 1877 and expected higher income from its later use (Greenleaf, p. 42).
  3. ^ William Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent. New edition. Great Lakes Books / Wayne State University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8143-3512-3 .

literature

  • William Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent. Great Lakes Books / Wayne State University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8143-3512-3 . (First edition 1955)
  • Henry Ford: My life and work. with the assistance of Samuel Crowther. 18th edition. Paul List Verlag, Leipzig 1923. Only authorized German edition by Curt and Marguerite Thesing
  • James J. Flink: America Adopts the Automobile - 1895-1910. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1970, ISBN 0-262-06036-1 .
  • Reinhard Seiffert: The Gottlieb Daimler era: New perspectives on the early history of the automobile and its technology. Vieweg + Teubner, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8348-0962-9 .
  • Beverly Rae Kimes : Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels: The Dawn of the Automobile in America. Ed. Society of Automotive Engineers Permissions, Warrendale PA 2005, ISBN 0-7680-1431-X .
  • Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers : Handbook of Gasoline Automobiles / 1904–1905-1906. Introduction by Clarence P. Hornung. Dover Publications, New York 1969.
  • Automobile Year Book 1917-1918. McClure Publications, New York 1917. (Presentation analogous to NACC: Handbook of Automobiles )
  • Axel Madsen: The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant made General Motors. John Wiley & Sons, 1999, ISBN 0-471-39523-4 .
  • Lawrence R. Gustin, Kevin M. Kirbitz, Robert A. Lutz (Introduction): David Buick's Marvelous Motor Car: The Men and the Automobile that Launched General Motors. 2nd, supplemented and expanded edition. RateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4662-6367-3 .
  • David A. Kirsch: The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick NJ / London 2000, ISBN 0-8135-2809-7 .
  • Ernest Henry Wakefield: History of the Electric Automobile; Battery-Only Powered Cars. Edited by the Society of Automotive Engineers . Warrendale PA, 1970, ISBN 1-56091-299-5 .
  • Gijs Mom: The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the Automobile Age. Reprint. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4214-0970-2 .
  • The Automobile of 1904. Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly (January 1904), Americana Review, 725 Dongan Ave., Scotia NY (USA); published 1904, also covers imports

Web links

Commons : George Baldwin Selden  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Commons : Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent. P. 149 (Road engine).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Postscripts: I Invented the Automobile: The Bitter War over the Selden Patent.
  3. ^ Early American Automobiles: History of Early American Automobile Industry 1891–1929. Chapter 11.
  4. ↑ Kimes, Clark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, pp. 1537-1538 (Selden).
  5. ^ Smithsonian institute, American History: Object NMAH_1305689; Selden Automobile Patent Model, 1879.
  6. ↑ BPM Legal: Patent No. 549160 to George Selden from November 5, 1895. (PDF)
  7. ^ Ford: Life and Work. 18th edition. 1923, pp. 70-71.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Byers: The Selden Case.
  9. ↑ kcstudio.com: Selden
  10. ^ A b c Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent. Pp. 40-42 (patent law).
  11. ^ A b c d Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent. P. 49 (Patent Office).
  12. ↑ Flink: America Adopts the Automobile. 1970, p. 29.
  13. ^ A b Second Chance Garage: The Columbia Car: Reliable, Simple to Operate and Ready for Action - To The Electric Vehicle Trust.
  14. ^ The Automobile of 1904. In: Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. January 1904, Americana Review.