Patent Appeal: The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in the American Automotive Sector, 1903-1911

Abstract

©2023 Historical Society of Michigan. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved In 1895, George Baldwin Selden patented an American automobile that utilized an updated Brayton-style engine. The following year, Henry Ford produced and test-drove his Quadricycle in Detroit.1 Selden—a patent attorney from Rochester, New York—was an innovator who, along with Elihu Cutler, Charles L. Clifton, Samuel T. Davis, Henry Joy, and Frederick Smith, helped establish the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM) in 1903. Ford and the coal magnate and entrepreneur Alexander Malcomson were instrumental in the founding of Ford Motor Company that same year, with a market capitalization of twenty-eight thousand dollars.2 John Gray served as the president of Ford until his death in 1906, while John and Horace Dodge played important roles as Ford executives and parts suppliers for the Model A and subsequent vehicles until the mid-1910s.3 From 1903 to 1911, Selden and Ford became bitter adversaries who attempted to leave their industrial imprints on the automotive sector in an intellectual property court case—George B. Selden and the Electric Vehicle C