Ford, a Michigan based auto major in America was started with a motive “inexpensive cars for the masses”. Being a family controlled company for over 100 years; this company is rather successful when compared to many of its rivals which started a hundred years ago. When American car manufactures started manufacturing motor cars in 1900s, they got patent license from ‘Association of Licensed Automotive Manufacturers’ (ALAM) which was owned by a patent Attorney named George B. Selden. Despite never having gone into production with a working model of an automobile ALAM got patent licensing rights to build cars and enjoyed the royalty.
Henry Ford refused to pay royalties to ALAM and started manufacturing cars. George took Ford to the court on the account of patent infringement. The patent war lasted for 8 years creating 14,000 pages of court documents. Finally George won the case in the trial court. This was the headlines in most news papers of that time. Encouraged by Thomas A Edison, Henry went for an appeal. George’s patent was over turned just a year before it could expire. The appeals court used the “Enablement” principle to decide the matter along with Non-obviousness.
Enablement means, providing sufficient and detailed information about the invention so that any appropriately trained person is able to make it. It goes without saying that the inventor must make the invention. There can be no patent granted merely for the concept or idea. It has to be operational. In this case, George was given patent for an improvement to Brayton Engine and he never manufactured a car based on his own patented invention. By the time the court overturned the patent, George had made several thousand dollars out of the patent.
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