In another thread people are questioning whether or not we can cover non political related issues in OD without starting a sub forum. I'll start with something that is not political albeit probably some legal opinions involved:


In college I did a Research Paper on the Selden Patent. I don't have much time, but I think I can give a condensed summary here. Once I got into it, I found it fascinating as did my professor.

The Selden Patent was the patent for the automobile. Selden was a patent attorney and tinkerer. He read the various mechanical and invention journals of the day and it was obvious that the invention of the horseless carriage was inevitable. In the 1870's or so, he drew up the patent papers for the automobile with very general drawings of the carriage, the transmission apparatus and the engine and submitted to the patent office with intentional loop holes.

By submitting with the loop holes, he got in the front of the line, but did not want the patent approved until the right time, so that his seventeen years did not expire too early. Every time the patent office sent it back, he corrected one loop hole and inserted another.

A bicycle company owner, I think Columbia Bicycle Company was approached by an inventor, I think Duryea. It appeared that the machine could be developed and built for profit. The Columbia owner sent his attorneys to Washington to see if there was a patent on such a machine. They of course, discovered the Selden patent which by that time had been cleaned up and approved.

Columbia's attorneys brought Selden back to discuss it. They came up with an organization of auto manufacturers. To abide by the patent, the auto maker would have to join the organization and pay royalties on each unit produced.

When Henry Ford started, he knew enough to go join the organization so that he could produce cars legally. Problem was, because of his desire to build an affodable car as opposed to expensive cars, he was considered to be a crack pot. When he came to the organization, they basically laughed at him and wouldn't welcome him to their organization.

He went back to Dearborn, ignored them and started building cars knowing that he had given them every chance to collect royalties from him. Once the Model T came along and took the world by storm, Henry became a success beyond any other auto maker. THAT is when Selden came knocking on Henry's door insisting that he pay royalties on every car he had ever built.

Problem for Selden was that Henry could hire more attorneys with his coffee money than Selden had ever seen in the same room. Selden made the mistake of taking ol' Henry to court. The case at least as of my college years was the biggest patent case in US history.

It turned out that once Henry and his people started getting into the details of Selden's patent, they learned that it was for a vehicle with a two cycle engine. It took awhile to educate the court on the difference, but Henry finally won his case.

This resulted in Seldens organization being forced to return all royalties to all auto makers so Selden, of course, went bankrupt.

This is a very fast and brief description and the names and dates may be wrong after 40 years of this all setting in the back of my mind.

I hope you find it as fascinating as my professor and I did.

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2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

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