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The Wright brothers patent war centers on the patent they received for their method of an airplane's flight control. The Wright brothers were two Americans who are widely credited with inventing and building the world's first flyable airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight on December 17, 1903.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=National Air and Space Museum )〕 In 1906, the Wrights received a patent for their method of flight control which they fiercely defended for years afterward, suing foreign and domestic aviators and companies, especially another U.S. aviation pioneer, Glenn Curtiss, in an attempt to collect licensing fees. Their legal threats suppressed development of the U.S. aviation industry for several years. Letters that Wilbur Wright wrote to Octave Chanute in January 1910 offer a glimpse into the Wrights' feeling about their proprietary work: "It is not disputed that every person who is using this system today owes it to us and to us alone. The French aviators freely admit it." In another letter Wilbur said: "It is our view that morally the world owes its almost universal use of our system of lateral control entirely to us. It is also our opinion that legally it owes it to us." The patent war stalled the development of the American aviation industry. In response, after the beginning of World War I, the U.S. Government pressured its aviation industry to form an organization that allowed the sharing of aviation patents. == The patent == During their experiments of 1902 the Wrights succeeded in controlling their glider in all three axes of flight: pitch, roll and yaw. Their breakthrough discovery was the simultaneous use of roll control (with wing-warping) and yaw control (with a rear rudder). A forward elevator controlled pitch. In March 1903 they applied for a patent on their method of control. The application, which they wrote themselves, was rejected. In early 1904, they hired Ohio patent attorney Henry Toulmin, and on May 22, 1906, they were granted U.S. Patent 821,393 for a "Flying Machine". The patent's importance lies in its claim of a new and useful method of ''controlling'' a flying machine, powered or not. The technique of wing-warping is described, but the patent explicitly states that other methods instead of wing-warping could be used for adjusting the outer portions of a machine's wings to different angles on the right and left sides to achieve lateral roll control. The concept of lateral control was basic to all aircraft designs; without it they could not be easily or safely controlled in flight. The broad protection intended by this patent succeeded when the Wrights won patent infringement lawsuits against Glenn Curtiss and other early aviators who devised ailerons to emulate lateral control described in the patent and demonstrated by the Wrights in their 1908 public flights. U.S. courts decided that ailerons were also covered by the patent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wright brothers patent war」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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