Here’s an obscure one… The big Boeing flying boats had sponsons rather than wingtip floats, as we all know. Dornier, however, had patented the concept of flying-boat/amphibian sponsons, and Boeing essentially stole the idea from Dornier. Does anybody know if they paid Dornier royalties, or did they just ignore the patent? Or was there some reason why they were able to use sponsons without violating the patent?
By: Stepwilk - 4th February 2017 at 14:38
Thank you all–oustanding information.
By: Kenneth - 4th February 2017 at 11:58
A bit of googling will reveal US Design Patent 101 707, from 1936 to Boeing, essentially a single-fin Boeing 314 with sponsons.
By: Kenneth - 4th February 2017 at 10:28
A patent only confers rights in the country or countries where it has been granted, so if the Boeing 314 was built, sold and operated where Dornier did not have a patent, then no problem. Moreover, what at a first glance look like the same thing is often not so. All depends on the wording of the patent.
By: Kenneth - 4th February 2017 at 10:24
Willy Messerschmitt filed several patent applications in the UK before WW2, some of which were actually granted and published during the war. One of them was for the Bf109 fuselage construction, with the bulkheads integral with the fuselage skin.
By: Roborough - 3rd February 2017 at 22:09
Didn’t Messerschmitt pay Handley-Page royalties for the use of HP slats on the 109 through the war years? I believe the payment was made through Swiss bank account (there’s a surprise!)
Bill
By: Arabella-Cox - 3rd February 2017 at 22:09
Yes you are correct, the Martin 130
By: J Boyle - 3rd February 2017 at 21:43
Boeing Aircraft since 1916 states that the sponsons on the 314 were only the second time they were used on a U.S. aircraft. I wonder what the first was? A Martin?
By the time that the 314 was being built (1936-39), US-German relations weren’t exactly rosy. So no one might have been in a hurry to cut them a check.
I don’t know the history of any prewar economic embargos, however, it might have been possible that payments weren’t allowed to German firms.
The entire story of patents in wartime is an interesting topic…
-were patents conveniently forgotten (the US government basically paid firms to forget patent issues during the Great War in the name of industrial cooperation for the greater good)?
-were payments ever made across battle lines?
By: Arabella-Cox - 3rd February 2017 at 21:20
Actually strike that, there is a UK patent and in this version the sponson is the lower plane of a triplane
By: Arabella-Cox - 3rd February 2017 at 20:48
My German is very rudimentary but the original Dornier patent is very brief and appears to describe floats mounted on the end of cantilever fins. Perhaps this was too specific to cover a more generic sponson, you know how good lawyers are at finding loopholes. Also I can find no British or US version of the patent, just Germany and France.
There were several flying boats built with sponsons prior to the Boeing so if he did receive royalties it was a nice little earner
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February 3, 2017 at 8:28 pm