On this day 117 years ago, George B Selden was granted US Patent 549,160 for a “Road Engine”. Selden had begun working on a motor vehicle almost 20 years earlier, and after initial experimental success he filed his patent application in May 1879. As a patent lawyer, Selden exploited the patent system to the full, filing a series of amendments to his patent application to delay the grant of the patent for 16 years until the automobile industry started taking off.
Selden’s patent claims were extremely broad, essentially covering any motor vehicle with a liquid hydrocarbon gas engine. His own efforts at commercialising an automobile had not achieved significant commercial success, so he set about exploiting his patent by collecting a 0.75% royalty from other car manufacturers. Henry Ford and a few others had no intention of paying, so a lengthy court battle contesting the patent ensued.
At first instance Selden was successful, but Ford appealed, and in January 1911 the appeal court determined that Ford’s motor cars did not infringe because they were based on the Otto engine rather than the Brayton engine described in Selden’s patent. Thus Selden’s substantial royalty income ended, although by that time he had collected several hundreds of thousands of dollars.