atus of
his invention and the conflicting claims involved.

When the nature of a patent right is considered it is difficult to see
why this should be so. The inventor creates a new thing--an invention of
utility--and the people, represented by the Federal Government, say to
him in effect: "Disclose your invention to us in a patent so that we may
know how to practice it, and we will agree to give you a monopoly for
seventeen years, after which we shall be free to use it. If the right
thus granted is invaded, apply to a Federal Court and the infringer will
be enjoined and required to settle in damages." Fair and false promise!
Is it generally realized that no matter how flagrant the infringement
nor how barefaced and impudent the infringer, no Federal Court will
grant an injunction UNTIL THE PATENT SHALL HAVE BEEN FIRST LITIGATED TO
FINAL HEARING AND SUSTAINED? A procedure, it may be stated, requiring
years of time and thousands of dollars, during which other infringers
have generally entered the field, and all have grown fat.

Thus Edison and his business associates have been forced into a
veritable maelstrom of litigation during the major part of the last
forty years, in the effort to procure for themselves a small measure
of protection for their interests under the numerous inventions of note
that he has made at various times in that period. The earlier years of
his inventive activity, while productive of many important contributions
to electrical industries, such as stock tickers and printers, duplex,
quadruplex, and automatic telegraphs, were not marked by the turmoil
of interminable legal conflicts that arose after the beginning of the
telephone and electric-light epochs. In fact, his inventions; up to
and including his telephone improvements (which entered into already
existing arts), had been mostly purchased by the Western Union and other
companies, and while there was more or less contesting of his claims
(especially in respect of the telephone), the extent of such litigation
was not so conspicuously great as that which centred subsequently around
his patents covering incandescent electric lighting and power systems.

Through these inventions there came into being an entirely new art,
complete in its practicability evolved by Edison after protracted
experiments founded upon most patient, thorough, and original methods
of investigation extending over several years. Long before attaining
the goal, he had realize