The Flying Machine Patent

July 11, 2011
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts

Two Americans, Orville and Wilbur Wright, invented and built the world’s first successful airplane and made the first controlled, powered and sustained flight in 1903. The Wright brothers succeeded in controlling all three axes of flight: pitch, roll and yaw.

In 1903 the Wright brothers applied for a patent on their method of flight control which they wrote themselves, and was rejected.

They eventually hired patent attorney Henry Toulmin, and in 1906 they were granted U.S. Patent 821393 for a “Flying Machine“. The patent’s importance lies in its claim of a new and useful method of controlling a flying machine, powered or not.

The patent describes ailerons used to emulate lateral control and wing-warping.

The Wright brothers won a patent infringement lawsuits against Glenn Curtiss and other aviators who used ailerons. Glenn Curtiss refused to pay license fees to the Wrights and sold an airplane to the Aeronautic Society in 1909.

By 1911 the Wright airplanes were inferior to those made in Europe.

Aviation development in the U.S. was suppressed to such an extent that when the U.S. entered World War I no acceptable American-designed aircraft were available, and they were compelled to use French aircraft.