In 1917, to promote
>wartime production, the government stepped in and forced all patent holders
>to accept a standard fee, so that any manufacturer could get free access to
>the technology. I imagine something similar would happen with the Mills device.
...and how does that differ from "When the amount gets that high, the
technology is simply stolen, the theft swept under the rug, and obscured
by legal niceties." ?
I do not know the details of the 1917 agreement, but the industry leaders did not complain. Orville Wright was retired from active business by that time, but he would have said something in his authorized biography if that agreement had bothered him. He complained endlessly about the actions of the Smithsonian in the years after the war. (The Wrights were famous for holding a grudge.) The standard fee was moderate, but the number of airplanes being manufactured for the wartime emergency was far higher than anyone ever anticipated. Wright later said that in his wildest imagination he never thought that thousands of airplanes would be manufactured in a single year. His business model, and the model of his competitors, anticipated making a few hundred airplanes a year for rich playboys. It had to be radically revised for mass production. Even in the new regulated environment, people continued to make gobs of money with patents for airplane components and innovations. I do not think you can say the patent rights were "stolen." They were adjusted to fit reality. Mills and his ideas badly need similar adjustments.
- Jed
