A HUGE Happy Birthday to Ford Motor Company !
119 Years Old Today, Incorporated June 16, 1903. Constantly Changing the World for the better with Countless Invention and Progress
Founded and formed by racing and innovation this company helped establish this country and changed the World Forever
Henry's fight with Selden over paying him a royalty on each car - lower RH box in ad.
However, Henry Ford, owner of the Ford Motor Company, founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1903, and four other car makers resolved to contest the patent infringement suit filed by Selden and EVC. The legal fight lasted eight years, generating a case record of 14,000 pages. Ford's testimony included the comment, "It is perfectly safe to say that George Selden has never advanced the automobile industry in a single particular...and it would perhaps be further advanced than it is now if he had never been born."
The 1906 Krebs testimony in the Selden case The case was heavily publicized in the newspapers of the day, and ended in a victory for Selden. In his decision, the judge wrote that the patent covered any automobile propelled by an engine powered by gasoline vapor. Posting a bond of US$350,000, Ford appealed, and on January 10, 1911, won his case based on an argument that the engine used in automobiles was not based on George Brayton's engine, the Brayton engine which Selden had improved, but on the Otto engine.
This stunning defeat, with only one year left to run on the patent, destroyed Selden's income stream.
$350,000 in 1906 is worth $11,367,066.67 today
Damned lawyers! But lets not forget that is the nonlawyers that start the litigation.