October i, 1906.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



INVENTORS AND THEIR REWARDS. 



T 



/"TAIII", rcwanls of invention are commonly sui)posiil to 

 b(! liberal. Belter evidence of this belief is not 

 needed than the voluminous issues every year from 

 the patent ofTices of the United States and a do/tn 

 other countries. There are yet people who suppose the 

 ownership of a patent for a new invention, to be a clear title 

 to a fortune ; it is only necessary to obtain a patent, and the 

 rest will happen as a matter of course. The great number of 

 failures seems in no way to deter the army of inventors, which 

 seems constantly' to increase. 



The profits made from very many patented articles have 

 been enormous, it is true, and the number of profitable 

 '■ new " inventions was never so great in any period in the 

 past as now. But profits under the protection of patents 

 and financial rewards for the patentee himself are not neces- 

 sarily the same thing. Hence the conviction in some minds 

 that the patentee of a useful article does not always get a 

 •■ square deal " ; in other words, that governments fail to do 

 all that they should for the interests of inventors. 



There always have been people who failed to make the 

 most of their opportunities, and inventors are, after all, made 

 of al)out the same sort of stuff as other people. One inven- 

 tor accepts the first price offered for an untried patent and 

 is content until, in the unforeseen ])rogress of the world, 

 the invention becomes useful and the purchaser is found to 

 be making a fortune. The first American patent for a rubber 

 beer bottle stopple was bought on a venture for J; 1000 by a 

 man who is reported to have derived 5,5,000,000 or more in 

 royalties from it. 



The fact is that the issue of a patent is usually so far in 

 advance of the development of the art to which it relates 

 that a fair opportunity to test the merit of the invention has 

 not been afforded. The inventor, therefore, has no means of 

 determining the value of his discovery. Thomas A. Edison 

 accepted $40,000, freely offered for his first patent, when he 

 doubtless would have been glad to accept $2000 for it. 



And not every inventor is enough of a business man to 

 make the most of the rewards that do come to him. The 

 inventor, in a measure, is apt to lack in business "sense." 

 He makes a mechanical improvement, for example, which 

 some one else is quick to see merit in, and prepared prom] tly 

 to place before the world. It is made and marketed as it it 

 represented finalitj' in perfection of the branch to which it 

 relates. But if its exploitation were left to the inventor, he 

 might never be satisfied with his product. Every time be 

 turned out a thousand of his device or apparatus he would 

 be tempted to experiment in the direction of an improxe- 

 ment — meaning new patents, new models, prospective 

 greater fortunes — so that the article would never be com- 

 pleted, and a large business never developed. 



It is not strange, therefore, that the actual inventor ;\nd 

 patentee of many an important principle or device has failed 

 to pocket a large share of the profits derived from its sale. 

 But there is another side of the question. The nominal in- 

 ventor and patentee, no matter how nnicli merit should le 

 ascribed to him, in countless instances has only contributed 

 to the world a crude idea, which has been made of really 

 great benefit to man, by the conibined efforts and skill of 



numerous other workers, who for the most part never share 

 the credit for the invention. 



Nelson {'loody ear (a younger brother of Charles) obtained 

 a patent for the compound known as hard rubber — some- 

 thing before not known to the world, and for awhile his 

 estate collected royalties from licensees under the patent. 

 But within a few years improvements were made in the art, 

 so that before the expiration of the Goodyear patent the 

 original process had become obsolete. To-day his patent 

 represents no more in the hard rubber art than the first sug- 

 gestion of the possibility of producing a material that has 

 come to be of great utility. First and last fortunes have 

 been made under patents for hard rubber in which Nelson 

 Goodyear's estate never shared, but only because his initial 

 invention was supplemented in an important way by so 

 many later investigators and experimenters. Possibly if 

 his patent specification had been written on broader lines, 

 the reward for Goodyear would have been more liberal, but 

 no blame can attach to the government in this regard. 



To-day the rubber tire represents the field in rubber inven- 

 tion which is most prolific in patents. It certainly is the rub- 

 ber branch which appeals most strongly to public interest. 

 Enormous sums have been paid for rubber tire patents or have 

 been collected in royalties undersuch patents. But nopatentee 

 of a rubber tire has grown wealthj' in consequence. The fact is 

 that out of thousands of tire patents, the principle involved in 

 a score or less has proved of commanding importance, and who- 

 ever happened to own the patents at the projiei time to share 

 in the development of the trade has profited financially — some 

 of them very largely. But this does not imply any lack of 

 justice, on the part of governments or tire makers, to the 

 various inventors involved. 



Look at Thomson, the English inventor, who brought out 

 the first pneumatic rubber tire, more than 60 years ago. He 

 was so far ahead of his time that he and his patent were 

 actually forgotten before a commercial demand for pneumatic 

 tires existed. When the time was ripe for such tires, and in- 

 ventors began to recognize the demand, their applications 

 for patents in many cases were denied on the ground of an- 

 ticipation by Thomson. Thomson himself never profited a 

 penny by his invention. Millions of tires based upon the 

 Thomson principle have yielded profits to somebody. Of 

 course there have been later inventors who have profited 

 from patents on improvements on the crude fastening or re- 

 taining devices suggested by Thomson. 



As for Dunlop, who had never heard of Thomson when he 

 took out a patent, his tire, though it was the original basis 

 of a great tire company, was never really subject matter for 

 a valid patent. And Dunlop's own tire soon dropped out of 

 sight. The tire which his company really founded their 

 business upon was made under the Welch patent, covering 

 the principle of attachment by means of two inextensible 

 wires, engaging a su tably grooved rim, but not necessarily 

 for a pneumatic tire. Not even Welch had in mind the 

 modern pneumatic tire. His specification did mention, in 

 one of iS claims, the applicability of his device to a tire 

 made on Thomson's principle, and this one claim eventually 

 survived and became the basis of the Dunlop monopoly. But 



