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- The Wright brothers patent war centers on the patent they received for their method of airplane flight control. The Wright brothers were two Americans who are widely credited with inventing and building the world's first flyable airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight on December 17, 1903. In 1906, the Wrights received a U.S. patent for their method of flight control. In 1909 they sold the patent to the newly formed Wright Company in return for $100,000 in cash, 40% of the company's stock, and a 10% royalty on all aircraft sold. Investors who injected $1,000,000 into the company were financial barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Theodore P. Shonts, Allan A. Ryan, and Morton F. Plant. It was this company that waged the patent war, initially in an attempt to secure a monopoly on U.S. aircraft manufacturing. Unable to do so, they adjusted their legal strategy, suing foreign and domestic aviators and companies, especially another U.S. aviation pioneer, Glenn Curtiss, in an attempt to collect licensing fees. In 1910 they won their initial lawsuit against Curtiss, when federal judge John Hazel ruled: It further appears that the defendants now threaten to continue such use for gain and profit, and to engage in the manufacture and sale of such infringing machine, thereby becoming an active rival of complainant in the business of constructing flying-machines embodying the claims in suit, but such use of the infringing machine it is the duty of this Court on the papers presented to enjoin. Of the nine suits brought by them and three against them, the Wright brothers eventually won every case in U.S. courts.Even after Wilbur Wright had died, and Orville Wright had retired in 1916 (selling the rights to their patent to a successor company, the Wright-Martin Corp.), the patent war continued, and even expanded, as other manufacturers launched lawsuits of their own—creating a growing crisis in the U.S. aviation industry. Many historians believe the patent war stalled development of the U.S. aviation industry, but other dispute this claim. Perhaps as a consequence, airplane development in the United States fell so far behind Europe that in World War I American pilots were forced to fly European combat aircraft, instead. After the war began, the U.S. Government pressured the aviation industry to form an organization to share patents. (en)
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