Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corporation v. United Aircraft Engineering Corporation

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Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corporation v. United Aircraft Engineering Corporation was a case in the US Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, heard 1 April 1920, and usually cited 266, F. 71. (The text starts on page 71 of Federal Reporter Volume 266.)

Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corporation unsuccessfully sued United Aircraft Engineering Corporation (a Canadian company operating in the US) for patent infringement.

Specifically, Curtiss accused UAEC of copying the Curtiss JN-4 airplane, to which all the cited patents were said to relate.

Curtiss Aeroplane & Motors Limited, a Canadian subsidiary, in 1916, received $4,000,000 from the British government, via J.P. Morgan & Co., in exchange for JN-4A airplanes and OX5 engines, as well as schematics and equipment to manufacture more of them.

The disputed issue, more or less, is whether airplanes produced from this agreement, could be sold in the US. UAEC was organized just at the end of World War I, for the purpose of selling off surplus aircraft held by the Imperial Munitions Board of Canada. The airplanes were purchased on behalf of UAEC by Frithiof Gustaf Ericson, chief engineer at Curtiss Aeroplane & Motors Limited, of Canada!

The court held that "if a patentee or his assignee sells a patented article, that article is freed from the monopoly of any patents which the vendor may possess". The airplanes were "absolute property" of the British government, having bought them outright and bought the right to manufacture others, and so it was free to sell them as it saw fit, as were the subsequent owners.

"It is admitted that, if the aeroplanes which are alleged to infringe had been built in Canada under a limited license, or under a Canadian patent, and then brought into the United States, infringement would have been made out. But that is not this case."

(We can see, then, that there was no dispute over the technologies covered by the thirteen cited patents. These patents were said to be the basis of the JN-4, and that claim was not contested. The issue was whether surplus JN-4's made and purchased in Canada could be legally resold in the United States.)

Patents cited

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