Third Party Press

Mauser Patent Infringement

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SmokeEaterPilot

Member
I just got back from a week long trek at the Archives outside of Boston.

I mentioned finding this among other things. Chris asked me to post it. Enjoy!

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Yes...we had to pay Germany to build a rifle....to kill Germans...

There were several cases of this happening around the world...I believe the British were paying the Germans to build artillery shell fuzes...
 
Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

More on Mauser’s patent battles can be seen in Speeds Archive book.

I’ve done some looking around online at comptroller and others attempting to find more records regarding the patents, but never found any. So thank you again for sharing these!
 
pzjgr said:
Yes...we had to pay Germany to build a rifle....to kill Germans...

There were several cases of this happening around the world...I believe the British were paying the Germans to build artillery shell fuzes...
Click to expand...

Kind of, but not really. Check the dates on those.

From what I recall of the last time I really dug into this, the ordinance bureau itself recognized that it was pretty deep into infringement territory and reach out to negotiate a settlement, which was resolved in 1905. Those royalties were capped and the payments wrapped up within a couple of years, well before WW1. It was all a pretty amicable process.

Things get more interesting later on, as DWM thought that the .30-06 cartridge was also infringing on their American patents for spitzer-type rounds. DWM approached in 1907 asking for a similar settlement, but the Ordinance Department's lawyers thought they had a stronger case and dragged things out for a few years in negotiations. Those negotiations fell apart in 1914 a few months before WW1 started and a lawsuit was filed.

The interesting part is what happened during the war. The lawsuit kicked around the courts until 1917, when the US got into the war, at which point the patents were seized as enemy assets. Since the government now owned the patents they got the case thrown out. A few years after the war DWM (or whoever inherited their patent portfolio, DWM corporate history gets a bit complex in the inter-war period and I'm not entirely sure who was doing what legally in the US during this time) filed another lawsuit alleging that the seizure of their patents had been unconstitutional. This was a much stronger case, the courts found in their favor, and they were awarded $300,000 in damages. There was an appeal which dragged out until the late 20s, at which point the government was ordered to pay, with interest, the original damage award. After interest it came out to a touch over $400,000.

So really it's more correct to say that we had to pay the Germans for a design that we eventually used to kill Germans, and then later on had to pay Germans after the fact for the bullets that we used to kill Germans.
 
ernie8 said:
What claims did Germany have on the spitzer bullet?
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DWM filed a patent on it in the US and the UK. I'm a little uncertain on who, exactly, developed it in Germany - most sources cite an "independent engineer Arthur Gleinich" - but on the actual patent he's listed as the submitter on behalf of DWM.

Happily the patent is up on Google Patents so you can take a look at it for yourself - https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/90/ab/f3/75a15adc115248/US841861.pdf

Now, should this patent have been issued? That's obviously open to debate. The Balle D pre-dates this pretty significantly. My suspicion is that the French designers never bothered filing an American patent and that the patent office back then was as good about properly researching to see if there was prior art as they are today.

Either way, that's how DWM gets in the mix with Spitzers in the US.
 
The patent is on the ratio of angle to length . Also it is strange that they waited until 1905 to file and it did not go into effect until 1907 . The German military was working with the S bullet pre 1900 .
 
ernie8 said:
The patent is on the ratio of angle to length . Also it is strange that they waited until 1905 to file and it did not go into effect until 1907 . The German military was working with the S bullet pre 1900 .
Click to expand...

My assumption has always been that, given the rapid and amicable settling on the Mauser patents in 1904-1905, this was more or less a fishing expedition to try to squeeze something similar from the ammo. That's conjecture, but the timeline lines up well, with this being filed right after the settlement.

My take is that this probably would have been shot down in the courts as basically being a weak patent, but the governmetn screwed up by seizing it during the war. The Ordinance Department certainly felt that they had a better chance with this one, and that's noteworthy as they're the ones who preemptively reached out to settle the issue with the rifles. The constitutionality of the confiscation is what they got slapped on later on. My guess is that if they'd actually let that case work its way through the courts rather than seize the patents it would have come up in the government's favor.
 
I agree with you . Would not have held up in court for several reasons , French did it with no problems . Just looking for $ from places with money . USA , UK .
 
My apologies for the delay in posting these. We traveled for the eclipse and our location had limited connectivity. Jon sent the following regarding the Mauser patent case, and as mentioned there is more in his Archive book.

"I have over 300 original docs on the Mauser/Springfield case from 1902-1910. Whats wild is Mauser had to re asign some 7 Mauser patents over to its US Mauser Reps VL&d so case could be represented in US. I missed a US auction by a few hours that had the Original Patents some 7 examples All Signed by Paul Mauser over to VL&d ,any bid of mine would have won out but I was to late to auction! Still after Mauser won case and some 200,000 Dollars Paul was still disappointed with these results.! Jon"

"to add to the Mauser/Springfield Patent story in 1905 The US Navy Asked Mauser to make up a special rifle scoped in 6mm Navy caliber and to write up costs to keep price low etc.After all the patent Crisis going on that Navy asked for this rifle is most Interesting . Please add that to the Patent case story. Thanks, Jon"
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Nat, I saw guys in Patent talks mention some 1930 period German DWM/Mauser US License payments so here is the actual Mark US Payment in 1930-31 financial year. This was in fact related to DWM Ammo production techniques the US used from DWM in earlier years without any agreements! Etc. Please add this to talks. Thanks, Jon
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Very cool, thanks for that.

Also I'm laughing at the first letter basically asking for help ducking customs duties.

The 1905 version of "Paypal friends and family please, do me a solid and just put "merry christmas" on the memo line"
 
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