Calton, 2018

• Chris Calton. How the Patent-Troll Wright Brothers Fought to Stifle Innovation. Mises Wire website. Feb 5, 2018

Notes

• Says patents are demonstrably roadblocks to innovation, and that the Wright vs. Curtiss case is the best example he can find.
• Identifies the Wrights' major invention as the control system by twisting the wings
• But that then "the brothers spent most of their career making sure that no other innovations could follow. This is because what standard histories call 'the invention of the airplane' is really just the government grant of a patent."
• "The patented technology was important, but it still required serious improvement before the airplane could become a viable means of transportation. But with their patent in hand, the inventive brilliance of these two men transferred from designing new machines to developing legal strategies to prevent anybody else from improving on their innovations."
• Asserts that "Most of the great innovations in flight did not come from the Wright brothers but, instead, came from their greatest competitor, Glenn Curtiss."
  • (Note: European developments are not mentioned here.)
• Asserts that the Wrights "refused to demonstrate [their] ability [to fly] to the public. . . . while Glenn Curtis was busy innovating publicly and with no great fear of people 'stealing' his ideas."
  • (The Wrights had public demonstrations in 1908-09, and before that although they there were some witnesses they avoided public demonstrations.)
• And that "Curtiss developed several innovations in flight – far surpassing the Wright brothers’ wing-warping novelty. In fact, to circumvent their patent, he developed his own system of controlling flight that is the predecessor to the modern technology: the aileron."
  • (Note: actually ailerons had been invented earlier, and patented, and were developed by many others. Let's verify whether Curtiss was a great innovator of ailerons.)
• "The Wright brothers claimed that the aileron – what was then referred to as a 'horizontal rudder' attached to the wingtip – infringed on their 1906 wing-warping patent. Instead of continuing to improve on their own invention, the Wrights spent their energy in the courtroom by filing lawsuits against every design Curtiss made."
• "Curtiss . . . responded to the Wrights by constantly redesigning and improving his airplanes – including coming up with more innovations, such as lightweight engines and planes that could land and takeoff from the water. He spent a fortune deflecting all of Orville and Wilbur’s legal challenges, all while continuing to advance the technology of flight."
  • (Shulman, 2002 tells this story well and more completely.)
• US judges generally ruled for the Wrights. They "ruled that any of Curtiss’s designs could not legally be sold unless he obtained a license from the Wright brothers and paid them a twenty-percent royalty on every plane he manufactured. By this time, he had a slew of airplane designs – each one better than anything the Wright’s could produce – but he was not legally allowed to take them to market without a license the Wright brothers were unwilling to sell him."
• "With their government-granted monopoly secure, the Wright brothers became the sole manufacturer of airplanes in the United States."
  • (Is that true?? There seem to have been many airplane companies in the US.)
• And, per Calton, they didn't improve their product. "The status of the airplane industry in the United States continued to be stagnant until the United States government finally decided to take action to incentivize further improvements. With the onset of World War I, the outdated Wright planes were being rapidly eclipsed by German engineers who were not subject to the Wright monopoly protections. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, it had a vested interest in the improvement of the airplane, so it all but repealed the Wright patent. The government reduced the Wright royalties from twenty percent to only one percent, and more importantly, it removed Orville’s power to sell or withhold licenses to his competitors . . ."
  • (By "all but repealed", Calton refers to the MAA patent pool, a somewhat more complicated institution. It is a valuable statement however if we can summarize this change from 20% to 1% so simply.)
• [Then] "the United States finally saw an explosion of innovation in the airplane industry – many of which were innovations that already existed but were artificially prevented from being brought to market. Contrary to standard patent theory, the Wright brothers were not incentivized to innovate because of the prospect of patent protection, but they did use their patent rights to stifle innovation both within their own company and the innovations of any potential competitors who dared to improve on their design."
  • So here, we see the argument against a government-enforced patent monopoly of the kind the Wrights' patent gave them. A critique and conflicting view is expressed in Quinn and Brachman, 2018

Original title	How the Patent-Troll Wright Brothers Fought to Stifle Innovation
Simple title	How the patent-troll Wright brothers fought to stifle innovation
Authors	Chris Calton
Date	2018
Countries	US
Languages	en
Keywords	Wright brothers patent conflict
Journal
Related to aircraft?	1
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