Word: patents
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...grand fight," predicted Irish Inventor Harry Ferguson four years ago, when he slapped a $251 million antitrust and patent infringement suit against Ford Motor Co., its subsidiary, Dearborn Motors Corp., Henry Ford II and other Ford officials. Ferguson was right; his suit turned out to be the biggest legal battle in the auto industry since 1911, when old Henry Ford himself successfully broke the famed Selden patent...
Last week Ford and Ferguson made a deal and settled the case out of court. The cost to Ford: $9,250,000, the biggest patent settlement ever paid in a U.S. suit. In the settlement, Ford conceded that it had infringed Ferguson's patents by copying the hydraulic valve, coupling system, and the power-take-off setup, agreed to make restitution to Ferguson on the basis of about $21 for each of the 441,000 tractors Dearborn Motors has made since mid-1947 (Ferguson had asked $100). Ford also agreed to alter the designs of its own tractors enough...
...Issued in 1895 to George B. Selden, a lawyer and inventor, the patent was so broad it apparently covered every gasoline-driven car, even though Selden himself never built one. Virtually every U.S. automaker paid 1½% of his sales in royalties to the owner, until Ford, in 1908, sent word: "Selden can take his patent and go to hell." After eight years of court fights, Ford proved the patents invalid...
...claim on the green gold in chlorophyll toothpastes? A small pharmaceutical outfit named Rystan Co., Inc. of Mt. Vernon, N.Y. thinks that it has. Eleven years ago Rystan, which is owned by ex-Adman O'Neill Ryan Jr. and two associates, paid more than $200,000 for a patent on all medical and dental compositions of water-soluble chlorophyll derivatives. Last month a federal court in Dallas upheld Rystan's patent and awarded the company $6,727 in damages against
...this summer. Rystan's President Ryan has been trying to line up other licensees, but hasn't had much success. Bristol-Myers and Whitehall, already market-testing chlorophyll variations of Ipana and Kolynos, are not rushing to sign up with Rystan; Kolynos, for one, thinks that the patent may not cover its product. Last week the Block Drug Co., which cleaned up by putting the first widely distributed ammoniated tooth powder (Amm-i-dent) on the market, and Colgate-Palmolive-Peet both filed suits seeking to break Rystan's patent...