Another Anti-Patent Myth Debunked: The Selden Automobile Patent

Posted by dbhalling 7 years, 8 months ago to Economics
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There is a myth by the anti-patent crowd that “overly broad” patents inhibit the development of new technologies. One of the classic examples they like to cite is the Selden Patent (US Pat. No. 549,160), which supposedly inhibited the development of the automobile around the turn of the century. A new paper ‘The “Overly-broad” Selden patent, Henry Ford and Development in the Early US Automobile Industry’ By John Howells and Ron D. Katznelson, shows that in fact the automotive industry prospered and inventiveness accelerated despite the Selden patent.
SOURCE URL: https://hallingblog.com/2016/07/11/another-anti-patent-myth-debunked-the-selden-automobile-patent/


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  • Posted by freedomforall 7 years, 8 months ago
    DB, how would the system work today if such a patent existed in a new developing industry? Would there be development in the niche, or would any development bring a horde of corporate lawyers down and stifle any new invention ? Or would the patent owning CEO wait until an invention was ready for market and use his pull on wall street to crush the new small business and pick up the IP for a song (and a percentage to his favorite bankster)?
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    • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
      This is hard to answer because of the variables. Assuming the start-up was the technology creator, large companies can and do spend them into the ground trying to defend their patent.

      In this case Ford was not the little guy. Selden misinterpreted the scope of his property right - I deal with case like this all the time.
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  • Posted by evlwhtguy 7 years, 8 months ago
    Point well made, but I will point out thet the Wright Brothers did in fact stifle the aviation business in the United States through their single minded determination to squeeze every penny out of their invention. That is one reason why the French were so far ahead of the US in aviation technology at the outset of the first world war. The USA in fact never contributed anything more than the Curtiss Jenny and the liberty engine to the war. No fighter plane or bomber. I think the wrights assumed the there would never be many airplanes and they had to squeeze every cent they could out of every example made. They didn't seem to understand that minimal licensing fees of the technology would earn them vast sums due to volume.
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    • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
      What is amazing is you willingness to pontificate in the face of overwhelming evidence against you.

      Your tactics are exactly the same as those of Global Warming prophets.
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      • Posted by evlwhtguy 7 years, 8 months ago
        I am not certain if you are answering to my post or someone else's. Let me know and I will try to sort out what exactly your point is with regard to my post.
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        • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
          Yes I am absolutely answer you. You ignore the overwhelming evidence and continue spewing the lies of the anti-patent crowd. You are exactly like the Global Warming idiots, just you have a different pet cause.
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          • Posted by evlwhtguy 7 years, 8 months ago
            I am afraid you are reading my post with the assumption that I am one of the "Anti Patent Crowd" I am not. This is akin to my telling you I went outside and got sunburned and you jump to the conclusion that I am one of the "Anti sun crowd" The only point I was making in my post is that patent owners can be their own worst enemies and giving specific evidence of how it can happen.
            It does not serve the process of discourse, to automatically assume that everyone is either for you or against you. If you do so you will miss the nuances of others perspective and experience.
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            • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
              "But I will point out thet the Wright Brothers did in fact stifle the aviation business in the United States through their single minded determination to squeeze every penny out of their invention."

              There is absolutely no evidence for this position
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              • Posted by evlwhtguy 7 years, 8 months ago
                Really....did you actually read my post? I gave specific examples. Do you know anything about the history of aviation at all? Just because one thing does not comport with your notion, does not mean it is not true.
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  • Posted by Technocracy 7 years, 8 months ago
    If anything stifled development in the auto industry I would vote for risk averse attitudes in management increasing as the auto companies grew in size and value.
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    • Posted by $ jdg 7 years, 8 months ago
      Innovative new car ideas have been smothered for 60+ years by anti-innovation regulations (mostly by NHTSA) that the car makers themselves lobby for and often write. The last serious attempt before the Tesla was the DeLorean, and before that there was an outfit in the '50s that sold maybe 150 cars before it went belly-up. So any conservatism on the car makers' part is only to avoid knocking holes in that scheme of overregulation.

      This is not to deny that intellectual-property law has been used to stifle innovation; it often is. But the auto industry doesn't contain very many examples of the practice. The computer industry does, both in hardware and software, and you can see them at techdirt.com on a weekly basis.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 8 months ago
    Not sure one could get away with such a "Generalized" Patent these days...It was my experience during the patenting process that specificity was required along with a working prototype. I patented two inventions and it was tough, the last one especially because there were 1000's of other solutions and ideas that had to be weighted against my idea.
    PS. didn't make a whole lot on either one...laughing. I would advise don't do it unless you can afford a patent attorney.
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    • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
      Did you read the actual patent? I did not but I am pretty sure the claims are pretty specific, I think Selden & Co just tried to expand it.
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      • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 8 months ago
        Yes, but like you relayed in the article...it was based upon the brayton engine but everyone was using otto by 1911. I remember seeing a documentary about this.
        When I designed the "expandable ring band", I also obtained design and utility patents to cover my butt...it's probably the only reason I made anything off it.
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  • Posted by term2 7 years, 8 months ago
    Industries prosper in spite of patents, through inventors succeeding in designing around them.

    Otherwise, the patent holder simply stands on their ability to have a government granted monopoly for an arbitrary 20 years and innovation is stifled.

    You are simply trying to defend the idea that only the "first" person to think of something gets a monopoly granted by the government. What about other people who thought of it independently? Why should they be prevented from enjoying the fruits of THEIR OWN inventions?
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    • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
      Nonsense - Patents are why business prosper and Ford had plenty of patents.

      Patents are property rights quit with the monopoly propoganda
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      • Posted by term2 7 years, 8 months ago
        I understand your position, being a member of the establishment. We just disagree on this. I am an actual inventor and see the damage that our patent system does. It doesnt protect anything; it just creates 20 year monopolies for the patent trolls.
        One thing that I will say that it DOES do, is encourage inventors to find ways around the patents, which isnt that hard a lot of the time and does result in some better ways to do things.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 8 months ago
          "encourage inventors to find ways around the patents"
          I was once asked to make something less efficient because supposedly some patent technicality allows the client to use a certain approach as long as it doesn't work too well. I don't know if this is because the patent was poorly written, the client's attorneys were wrong, or if this is just how patents work.
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          • Posted by term2 7 years, 8 months ago
            the US patent system isnt great, in my opinion. Its expensive, takes a long time, and often stifles innovation rather than encourages it. Its run by patent lawyers who love it, due to its complexity and need for them.
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            • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
              That is a different question. I would agree with almost all of those statements. Just because property registration system is complex, does not mean that you throw out property rights.
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    • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 8 months ago
      Could it be that the non-aggression principle is assumed to not apply or that aggression is taken to be the production of some physical object to sell without the permission of government. The actual aggression is the extortion of some forced activity by the so called infringer of the patent. Resistance would be futile due to a law of force.
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      • Posted by term2 7 years, 8 months ago
        I am a little confused by your post. Can you explain a bit more?
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        • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 8 months ago
          Patent law, as with all laws, entails some threat of the use of force if not followed. That force would be initiated by the governing body of the patent. But, perhaps those who desire to have patents which are enforced by government or other forceful agents, believe that someone who should produce something that is patented has somehow been the initiator of some kind of force against the patent holder. Patent law is law that can punish for a non-criminal act, i.e., for a non-initiation of force against a person's person or property. If I recall right, patents originally were to help a creator of a new useful device or process to recoup some of the money invested in developing the device over a short period of time and not as a means for a lifetime and beyond of prohibiting others from using an idea without paying for use of the idea. The prohibition is on the sale of something which includes the application of the idea and not the idea itself since one can use the idea for ones own personal purpose without infringing the patent. Same with a copyrighted material where one can create a copy in memory without infringing the copyright. That mental copy cannot be considered the property of the creator of the original work.
          If force is to be applied to patents and copyrights, the period time should be as short as possible for payment for the time of developing the ideas involved and then let the market decide as to the real value of the idea by whether it is saleable for long periods of time and whether others can use the ideas better.
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          • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
            No - this is the problem with not having a correct understanding of property rights. The person initiating force is the one who violates someone else's property rights. In this case Selden was incorrect that his property rights extended as far as he claimed/thought.
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            • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 8 months ago
              How do you define force and its initiation? How can a monopoly, which patents, copyrights, and trademarks are, be maintained except by force or by forcefulness through a law or maybe by social pressure where some force is implied? And how can a monopoly be broken without some kind of force? Either one requires some kind of government force through law.
              A property right is a sub-category of rights and thus is the freedom of action in a social context. A right does not require law to define it. So IP is not freely acted on but as with property any so called right to it is actually permission by government to use it in some range of action. Suppose I memorized Atlas Shugged, I probably just violated some IP right there by not having permission to Miss Rand's usage rules, I could copy the memory to paper and have a hard copy of Atlas Shugged without having paid a royalty and could give it to my brother without permission. Could I be sued for IP rights violation? As soon as the idea is placed in the form that others can purchase, it can be come personal property of the purchaser. Unless it has a licensing provision for the purchase, as with software and other IP that is not in the public domain, then it is not owned by the purchaser but permitted to be used without ownership. A patent requires the disclosure of the IP behind the invention and thus the freedom of others to know the non-secret. If you want to keep the secret, don't disclose it so that it takes a period time and maybe a large investment to discover it and you have a period of time to recoup your investment in development.
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          • Posted by term2 7 years, 8 months ago
            Good analysis. I think a patent forbids everyone else from manufacturing and/or selling the patent device.
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            • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
              No it is a property right. It forbids people from doing so without the permission of the property right holder.
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              • Posted by term2 7 years, 8 months ago
                It is not a property right. It simply grants a monopoly to the FIRST person to go through the very expensive government patent system, and who has the money to defend the monopoly.
                If a person's intellectual property is sacred, then why is it only the FIRST one to seek government protection that gets the monopoly?. It would seem to me that if it is some sort of innate property right, then anyone who comes up with the idea should have identical rights- which doesnt happen with the patent system here.
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                • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
                  You do not know what property rights are. Why don't you spam another site. Instead of clogging up one about Rand.
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                  • Posted by term2 7 years, 8 months ago
                    Has nothing to do with Ayn Rand. You never answer my objection about why only the first inventor has a right to his invention, but no one else has a similar right even though they independently invented the same thing. How can the first one have a "right" to his intellectual property, but no one else can have a right to theirs? Its a legitimate question.
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                    • Posted by $ CBJ 7 years, 8 months ago
                      Actually, it has quite a bit to do with Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was definitely in favor of patents, but by using her own ethical system, a strong case can be made that treating patents as property conflicts with that same ethical system. The "second independent inventor" being entitled to the product of his/her own mind is a case in point.
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                      • Posted by term2 7 years, 8 months ago
                        Thats why I brought it up. Today, with all the patent trolls out there who patent everything they can get away with (not intending to ever commercialize it), and who just wait for someone else to have the idea and actually produce it and then are held hostage by the patent troll for royalties
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  • Posted by $ Susanne 7 years, 8 months ago
    George Selden- was a patent attorney and tried to write a set of patentable specs back in the 1870's to cover all autos in perpetuity (a hell of a get rich scheme for George Selden) and modified it repeatedly over the years... Ford recognized it for the scam it was and fought it until (IIRC) 1919 when a judge threw it out. Selden actually built a vehicle from his patent specs in response to the suit by Ford; it was an ugly, ungainly thing that barely even ran. There are photos of the Selden, and I think it's in the Smithsonian... But it was enough not only to convince a judge that the suit had some merit, but only for a vehicle built around Selden's original design, and that it had little (if any) bearing on the then - modern automobile. Victory for Ford (and entrepreneurs)...
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  • Posted by $ CBJ 7 years, 8 months ago
    Re the last sentence of your article:

    There is no monolithic “anti-patent crowd”. Any particular individual who opposes patents may or may not be part of a “group” or a “movement”. Any particular individual who opposes patents may or may not lie. Any particular individual who opposes patents may or may not cite the Selden patent as evidence for his or her belief.

    I agree with you that “. . . the automotive industry prospered and inventiveness accelerated despite the Selden patent.” Nevertheless, even though the eventual outcome was favorable for Ford, significant time and resources were expended by Ford, ALAM and the courts in asserting, defending against and adjudicating the infringement claim. The automotive industry might have prospered to a greater extent if this claim had never been brought.
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    • Posted by 7 years, 8 months ago
      Actually you are incorrect their are several anti-patent crowds. There are the socialists who are just against patents, there are the Austrians who are against patents, and then there are the crony capitalists who are against patents, not to mention just the anti-reason crowd.

      Once again you last statement shows a complete lack of understanding of the empirical data. The U.S. had the strong patent system and had the automotive industry. Those countries without patent systems were not even close to the US, so unless you mean it would have been better if this one patent had not existed your statement is nonsense
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