222 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



on such matters shall be accepted as final, and the Contractor, for itself and for 

 its employees, agrees that the inventor or inventors will execute all documents 

 and do all things necessary or proper to carry out the judgment of the Committee. 

 The Contractor agrees that it will include the provisions of this paragraph in all 

 contracts of employment with persons who do any part of the work called for 

 in paragraph i hereof. 



At the same time the Committee authorized the Chairman to appoint 

 an Advisory Committee on Patents to advise on general principles and on 

 procedure in specific cases. Coe was appointed Chairman of this commit- 

 tee and Loyd H. Sutton, a Washington attorney, was designated to serve 

 with him. On the basis of a report by this committee, a resolution was 

 adopted at the October 25, 1940, meeting of NDRC which directed that 

 every contract should provide that no suit should be brought against the 

 Government on any patent granted upon an invention made under the 

 contract; that, whenever, with the assent of the Committee, the contractor 

 should assign to the Government the entire right, title and interest in an 

 invention made under a contract, the Committee should pay all costs inci- 

 dent to the filing, prosecution and issuance of the application for patent; 

 that, wherever, with the assent of the Committee, the contractor retained 

 all rights in any invention made under a contract, it should pay such costs; 

 and that special circumstances might justify a departure from these gen- 

 eral principles in a particular case. 



The patent policy adopted by NDRC up to this time left the contractor 

 completely subject to the judgment of the Government as to the disposition 

 of rights to inventions made under NDRC contracts. Some industrial con- 

 tractors refused to sign contracts with such a provision. The situation was, 

 in fact, somewhat anomalous. The United States was at peace and many 

 people believed it would not become involved in the war being waged in 

 Europe. On the other hand, NDRC was obsessed with the urgency of its 

 task, fearing that the United States would be forced into the war while still 

 unprepared from a scientific standpoint. To avoid delays it was essential 

 that NDRC deal with organizations possessing the best available scientific 

 manpower and facilities. Time was of the essence. There was need, not 

 only for the facilities of the best equipped and most advanced groups in 

 the country, but for their best brainpower as well. In effect NDRC was 

 asking America's leading companies to take their best men oItE their own 

 problems and put them (at cost) on problems selected by NDRC, and then 

 leave it to NDRC to determine what rights, if any, the companies would 

 get out of inventions made by their staff members. 



These companies had acquired a great deal of "know-how" as a result 

 of years of effort and the expenditure of their own funds, often in large 

 amounts. The research they were being asked to undertake was in many 

 cases in line with their regular work (which made the companies particu- 



