ample, spent nine million dollars last year upon scientific and technical research. The General Electric Company spends several millions yearly. These and similar companies hire inventors almost as they hire bookkeepers and pay them regular salaries.

"Finally, it will be observed that the so-called basic patents in radio soon cease to be the controlling factor in the patent structure. Fleming and De Forest are both still living, and their work in tubes made possible everything we mean by the word radio."

"The basic DeForest and Feming patents have expired and yet neither can unrestrictedly manufacture a tube commercially to-day. Two hundred more patents upon mere details of design and manufacture have taken all commercial value out of their fundamental ideas.

Even at the risk of covering familiar ground, it may be well to locate briefly the control of those patents that at the moment seem to be the most important. The General Electric Company owns the patents by Coolidge and Langmuir on tubes, by Lagmuir on the grid leak, and by Rice on neutralization. The American Telephone and Telegraph (including Western Electric) owns the patents by Arnold on tubes, Hartley on neutralization, and Lowenstein on the C battery. The Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company owns the patents by Armstrong on regeneration and by Fessenden on the heterodyne principle. The Hammond patents on inventions involved in super-heterodyne sets are licensed exclusively to the R. C. A. and the A. T. & T. Company, but Hammond reserved certain rights in military and naval fields as well as the right to license the United States Government.

"The Radio Corporation has exclusive licenses under the Telephone Company, Westinghouse, and General Electric patents to sell and use apparatus in certain fields of use, among which is broadcast reception. The apparatus sold by the R. C. A. is made by Westinghouse and General Electric and some by the Wireless Specialty Apparatus Company.

"Of essential radio patents at the moment, only two are held outside the Radio Corporation. These are Hazeltine's patents on neutralization and Latour's on the common B battery also held in this country by Hazeltine. The R. C. A., however, holds a non-exclusive license under the Latour patents. Perhaps a third might be reckoned in the Schloemilch and Van Bronck (German) patent on the reflex circuit, seized by the Government as alien property during the war and now free to the general public."

How to Patent Your Radio Invention.

Speaking of radio inventions, there is an article in the November, 1926, number of Popular Radio, by Edgar H. Felix, which is chiefly interesting to readers of this periodical for some estimates of the profits from certain. patents in the field. For instance, Lee De Forest is quoted as stating that he has made from $800,000 to $1,000,000 on his inventions, but that they have earned $500,000,000 for others than himself. Dubilier says he has made $3,000,000 in twenty years, but has spent $1,500,000 on development and patent expenses. Donle received $300,000 for the sale of his sodion patents alone. Marius Latour, the French inventor, has so far received $1,500,000 on his radio patents; while Dr. Reginald Fessenden sold just one of his patents for $1,000,000. "He has probably patented more new radio inventions than any other man.'

Along this same line, The Scientific American is running a series of articles on "Inventors Who Have Achieved Commercial Success," starting in the January number. The first article discusses William Garfield Kendall, a professional inventor, whose best known inventions are the compact and the metal holder for it. He has done nothing spectacular, but by sticking to the business he knows best, cosmetics, he has built up a fortune on patents. His advice is: "Do not overlook the fact that your hardest work comes after your inven

tion is made. Find a definite need for an invention, work out your invention thoroughly and get the best kind of a patent you can. Then bring into play all the business senses you have to see that your invention gets on the market. If it is good the public will take it. There may be attempts at infringement, but such attempts are only evidence that your product is good. I have been fortunate. I have never sued or been sued over a patent."

M. O. P.

CURRENT COURT DECISIONS.

BEYER v. FLEISCHMANN CO. Circuit Court of Appeals, 6th Circuit 15 F. (2d) 465.

Suit charging defendants (appellants) with infringement of patents 1,148,328 and 1,151,526 for process of making bread.

As a bar to defendants' right to question the validity of the patents, the bill set up the decision in Ward Baking Co. v. Hazelton Baking Co. (292 F. 202), wherein the same patents were held valid, and alleged that plaintiff herein was the plaintiff in that case and that defendants here were the real defendants in interest there. Defendants in their answer presented the following issues: First, were defendants here in such privity with the Hazelton Co. as to make the prior decision binding on them? Second, is defendants' present process patentably equivalent to that of the prior defendants' process? The trial Court found for plaintiff in both issues.

The record of the proceedings in the other case, presented in evidence here by plaintiff, shows that the Beyer Co. openly took an active part in, if it did not actually conduct, the defense in the prior action.

The lower court accordingly found that defendants were bound by the decision in the other case, applying the well-established principle that one who prosecutes or

defends a suit in another's name, to establish or protect some interest of his own, or who openly assists in such an action, to the knowledge of the opposing party, is as much bound as if he were a party of record.

Defendants objected on the ground of "hearsay," to the introduction of counsel's opening remarks in the trial of the prior case, in which he tacitly mentions the Beyer Co. as a defendant.

The court here holds that such remarks, while ordinarily inadmissable, are admissible here in spite of the objection, in view of the other circumstance showing participation by Beyer in the trial. It is held, in accord with the court below, that such participation made the judgment binding on the defendants herein.

The court further holds, that, in spite of certain variations in the process as practiced by defendants, it is patentably the same as the patented process, and, hence, infringes

Judgment was accordingly affirmed.

F. H. MARKS.

U. S. GYPSUM CO. v. BESTWALL MFG. CO. ET AL. Dist. Ct. N. N., Ill., E. D., July 21, 1925, 15 F. (2d) 704.

In the original bill in this case, Bestwall Mfg. Co. was named sole defendant, charged with infringement of patents 1,029,328 and 1,034,746. The decree, affirmed by the Circuit Court (270 F. 542) held all the claims valid and infringed.

A supplemental bill was filed by plaintiff, introducing new defendants and charging other infringements, and praying for a preliminary injunction thereon. An order denying such an injunction was affirmed on appeal. Later, the Bestwall Co. applied to the Circuit Court for leave to open the decree in the District Court, in order to introduce evidence tending to show that one Brown was the prior inventor. This petition was denied.

The Court now holds that the group of defendants are

not barred by the court order (290 F. 798) from asserting the ground of invalidity contended for, inasmuch as they were not parties to the original suit, and did not have their day in court. It was held, further, that these defendants had the right to show prior invention by Brown, as a basis for invalidity, contrary to plaintiff's contention, stating that no power is conferred on an employer by the statute to state that one of his employees has made an invention, when he has not in fact. Unless supported by the oath of the true inventor, a patent is void.

As to Brown, in the Courts opinion, his demonstration did not advance the art a single step, inasmuch as "his ideas were inchoate, nebulous, and indeterminate," and, hence, furnish no basis for assailing the validity or narrowing the scope of the patents.

This brought up the principal issue, whether or not the process and product were to be strictly limited to those claimed, or whether plaintiff was entitled to a range of equivalents sufficiently broad to include the defendant's process and product.

This question was previously considered by the Circuit Court of Appeals, when an appeal was taken from the order denying a preliminary injunction (290 F. 801), and was answered in the affirmative. While the present court agrees with counsel for plaintiff that this did not estab lish the "law of the case" for this court, nevertheless, inasmuch as all the facts bearing on the degree of inven tion and range of equivalents were before the Court of Appeal, the opinion of that Court given after mature deliberation is given considerable weight. The District Court, accordingly, comes to the same conclusion.

Decree was for plaintiff on the supplemental bill, finding the patents valid and infringed. F. H. MARKS.