5. Despite patenting their inventions, the Wright Brothers were forced to spend years fighting court cases over the theft and resale of their intellectual property
Attempting to patent their invention in 1903, their initial application was rejected. Submitting a revised patent for “new and useful Improvements in Flying Machines”, U.S. Patent 821393 was granted on May 22, 1906. Among the features protected was “wing-warping”: the adjusting of a plane’s wings to create lateral control and allow for a coordinated turn. Despite this, several rival aviators sought to steal and sell similar creations, most notably Glenn Curtiss. After a one-kilometer flight by Curtiss in 1908, the brothers warned him not to infringe upon their patent any further; nonetheless, Curtiss did just that, refusing to pay license fees to the Wrights and selling an airplane equipped with patented designs to the Aeronautic Society of New York in 1909.
Beginning a protracted legal battle against Curtiss, as well as European companies seeking to file patents in their own countries for similar inventions, the Wright Company was ultimately successful in 1914 when a U.S. Court of Appeal upheld a verdict in their favor against Curtiss. Despite emerging victorious the lawsuits damaged public perceptions of the Wrights, who had previously been seen as friendly and, subsequently, were depicted as greedy. This was unfair to the Wrights, who, against the wishes of their company’s directors, refused to push for a legal monopoly and instead merged with Curtiss Aeroplane in 1929.