IP: re: "we wouldn't do that" (nationalize patents) -- Fulton & RCA set straight

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 13:10:30 -0400
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: Richard Jay Solomon <rsolomon () dsl cis upenn edu>
>
>
> Mike O'Dell's first premise (below) is not quite correct. The Fulton 
> Steamboat patents were used by New York State to grant Fulton a monopoly 
> on steamboat transport across the Hudson. The Supreme Court ruled  (around 
> 1820, I think) that that violated the Commerce Clause of the Constitution 
> and negated the monopoly, not the patents. It never applied to steam 
> locomotives, since they didn't show up until around 1832 and their design 
> had little to do with the Fulton patent anyway.
>
> The second premise is almost true, except that no one's ox was gored in 
> the creation of RCA from the Marconi Wireless Corporation of America in 
> 1919, except perhaps the British world telegraph cartels. All the American 
> patent holders, including the U.S. Navy, GE, Westinghouse, AT&T and United 
> Fruit, sat on the board of the RCA holding company. In essence it was a 
> cartel permitting AT&T and General Electric to pursue their own respective 
> interests in telephony and radio broadcasting without interference from 
> each other and from smaller entities. Eventually the U.S. Navy bowed out 
> and DOJ halted some of the more insidious practices of the cartel, and RCA 
> was spun off as an independent entity; but the taxpayers got what they 
> needed by fostering an important industry (radio) during its infancy. All 
> this happened AFTER  World War I, not during, for complex foreign policy 
> reasons I won't get into here, and had nothing to do with the War effort 
> itself. It did help that during World War II we had a viable electronics 
> industry in place, but by then RCA was no longer the patent holding 
> company that it started out as. RCA now had very different functions, and 
> its original stockholders were no longer in control but were now 
> competitors. (Many decades later, in the 1980s, RCA imploded and GE picked 
> up part of its pieces, but that is another story).
>
> Richard
> (PS. I wrote a paper on RCA's beginnings for the House Science Committee 
> as part of some testimony I gave a long time ago on HDTV, if you want a copy.)
>
>
> At 7:38 PM -0400 10/19/01, David Farber wrote:
> > > Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 19:10:54 -0400 (EDT)
> > > From: "Mike O'Dell" <mo () ccr org>
> > > To: dave () farber net
> > > Subject: "we wouldn't do that" (nationalize patents)
> > >
> > >
> > > uh, the US has done it, and several times
> > >
> > > at one point in history, it was impossible to (legally) build
> > > a steam locomotive in the US because it was impossible to
> > > obtain all the necessary patents.  If you got a license from
> > > FOO, then BAR wouldn't license you theirs, and vice versa,
> > > except there were several more patent holders than two.
> > >
> > > the Congress finally got tired of the shouting matches and
> > > simply nationalized the patents, paid everyone a token fee,
> > > and then told them all to get busy building railroads instead
> > > of enriching laywers.
> > >
> > > a more recent example was the creation of RCA, the Radio
> > > Corporation of America.  essentially like before, it was almost
> > > impossible to obtain all the patent licenses required to build
> > > state-of-the-art radios without spending a fortune in lawyers
> > > fees.  when it became important to build radios for the war
> > > effort, Congress again stepped in, nationalized the patents,
> > > and the Radio Corporation of America was created to provide
> > > one-stop-shopping for the bundle of licenses at a cost that
> > > didn't interfere with production.
> > >
> > > yup - several people got very screwed in all this, but the
> > > US government decided having something widely available was
> > > more important than any one company getting rich.
> > >
> > > so people shouldn't be so quick to throw around "socialist"
> > > accusations.  we've been there and done that, too.
> > >
> > >         -mo
> >
> >
> > For archives see: http://lists.elistx.com/archives/interesting-people/


For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/