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WA7rITING IN Poor Richard's Almanack in 1742, Benjamin Franklin provided a good vignette about the expenses and frustrations that would bedevil airplane manufacturers at the beginning of the twentieth century.He wrote: In my travels I once saw a Sign call'd The Two Men at Law; One of them was painted on one Side, in a melancholy posture, all in Rags with this Scroll, I have lost my Cause.The other was capering for Joy, on the other Side, with these Words, I have gain'd my Suit, but he was stark naked.'Litigation is always expensive, but federal cases filed to defend U.S. patents against infringement have always been far more costly than most other judicial matters.This was particularly the case when the Wright airplane patent was litigated between 1909 and 1917.A 1918 truce was negotiated through the establishment of a patent pool among the leading airplane manufacturers, midwifed by the federal government intent upon increased wartime production of aircraft.Franklin's caricature might well be descriptive of the Wright Brothers, their successor companies, and those who opposed them.In 1914, the Wrights appeared to have won in the courts, but by that time they had forfeited any hope of preeminence in airframe manufacturing.Ostensibly, Curtiss and his companies lost to the Wrights, but
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