erns which were wrongfully appropriating his ideas and actively
competing with his companies in the market.

The ramifications of this litigation became so extensive and complex
as to render it necessary to institute a special bureau, or department,
through which the immense detail could be systematically sifted,
analyzed, and arranged in collaboration with the numerous experts
and counsel responsible for the conduct of the various cases. This
department was organized in 1889 by Major Eaton, who was at this time
and for some years afterward its general counsel.

In the selection of the head of this department a man of methodical and
analytical habit of mind was necessary, capable of clear reasoning, and
at the same time one who had gained a thoroughly practical experience
in electric light and power fields, and the choice fell upon Mr. W.
J. Jenks, the manager of the Edison central station at Brockton,
Massachusetts. He had resigned that position in 1885, and had spent
the intervening period in exploiting the Edison municipal system of
lighting, as well as taking an active part in various other branches of
the Edison enterprises.

Thus, throughout the life of Edison's patents on electric light, power,
and distribution, the interminable legal strife has continued from
day to day, from year to year. Other inventors, some of them great and
notable, have been coming into the field since the foundation of the
art, patents have multiplied exceedingly, improvement has succeeded
improvement, great companies have grown greater, new concerns have come
into existence, coalitions and mergers have taken place, all tending
to produce changes in methods, but not much in diminution of patent
litigation. While Edison has not for a long time past interested himself
particularly in electric light and power inventions, the bureau which
was initiated under the old regime in 1889 still continues, enlarged
in scope, directed by its original chief, but now conducted under the
auspices of several allied companies whose great volumes of combined
patents (including those of Edison) cover a very wide range of the
electrical field.

As the general conception and theory of a lawsuit is the recovery of
some material benefit, the lay mind is apt to conceive of great sums of
money being awarded to a complainant by way of damages upon a favorable
decision in an important patent case. It might, therefore, be natural to
ask how far Edison or his compa