Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-10-20
RADIO LITIGATION
IN HIGHEST COURT
"Feedback" Case, Fought
for Decade, Reaches U. S.
Supreme Tribunal.
BY MARTIN CODEL.

Radios most celebrated litigation has
gone to the Supreme Court of the
United States for final adjudication,
after dragging through the lower courts
for more than decade.
The highest tribunal in the land,
having heard legal land scientific argu
mentS by brilliant array Of couns-
must now decide whether 1t was DR.. l.
De Forest or Maj. Edwin H. Armstrong
who discovered the oscillating proper
ties of the three-element tube, which
makes modern radio broadcasting and
reception possible.
No one disputes De Forests invention
back In 1905 of the vacuum tube itself,
often described as the heart of the
radio" An issue of major magnitude,
however, has arisen over the determine
ton whether De Forest or Armstrong
invented the feedback circuit. This is
the vital element in transmission and
reception, which accounts for the mys-
ferrous conversion of radio frequencieS
into audion or telephone frequencies.
Appearing Thursday and Friday of
this week before Chief Justice William
Howard Taft and his associates on be-
half Of the De Forest claims, were
Charles Evans Hughes, Judge Thomas
B. Haight and Samuel E. Darby, jr.,
De Forest and others are respondents
along with the American Telephone &
Telegraph Co.. which is understood to
own his litigated patent.
De Forest Is Absent.
DR.. De Forest, now busily engaged
in new tube production and talking
motion picture enterprises, did not ap-
pear. Maj. Armstrong was there, how
ever, and scores of eager listeners.
Maj. Armstrong Is co-petitioner in
the case with the Westinghouse Electric
81 Manufacturing Co. assignee of his
originally upheld feedback patent. Their
counsel are Frederick H. Wood, Drury
w. Cooper and Thomas Ewing.
Victory for Armstrong, who is I'M
derStood to have drawn many millions
in royalties on his patent would throw
his feedback patent open to the public
when it expires in 1881. A decision in
De Forests favor would validate his
patent through 1941, possibly insuring
ment with the A. T. 81 T. precludes that.
It was while he was a "ham," or
amateur wireless fan and an electrical
engineering student, at Columbia Uni
versity in 1912 that Armstrong became
interested in the audio tube invented
by De Forest. The tube was then merely
a detector and not an amplifer and
oscillator.
Armstrong Gets Patent.
Armstrong claimed to have found that
radio currents existed in the output
or delivery circuit end of the audion.
He found that he could take plate radio
currents and reapply them to make a
fron
which increased signal strength several
hundredfold. BY increasing the regen-
Grafton he could make radio frequency
oscillator or generator for receiving
continuous waves. This underlieS the
tube transmitter and tube receiving
set of today.
Applying for patent in 1913, Arm
strong obtained 1t from the United
States Patent Office several years later.
Meanwhile, De Forest was making re-
generative and heterodyne receivers
and tube oscillating transmitters. Arm
strong sued De Forest for infringing
his patent.
De Forest commended that he had
made the broad invention Of the oscil-
lator in 1912 and that Armstrong could
not stop him from selling his product.
Judge Julius Mayer, in United States
District Court for the southern district
of New York, upheld Armstrong and de-
clared that De Forests work in 1912
did not anticipate the Armstrong patent.
Both Win Appeals.
Upon appeal, the Court of Appeals of
the second circuit upheld Armstrong in
1922. Meanwhile, there was "offshoot"
litigation. An improvement patent OBJ
tanned by Armstrong was held by the
Court of Appeals to be an interference
with De Forests patent. With this
award, De Forest sued in the Federal
Court at Philadelphia to cancel the
Armstrong patent. Judge Thompson
held that the patent ought to be can
celed.
Armstrong, Of course, appealed to the
Court Of Appeals. That court held for
De Forest. In another case in Whining
ton, Judge Morris also held for De For
est on oscillator use. Armstrong ap-
pealed back to the Court of Appeals in
Philadelphia, where another decision
for De Forest resulted.
The net result Of the court issues was
that the Federal District Courts for the
New York district were at odds in their
findings with the courts at Philadelphia
and Wilmington. The appeal by Arm
strong from the last-named case is what
the Supreme Court has to decide, but
the whole array of cases known as the
"feedback" cases, are really up for
final determination.
There is tremendous interest in the
outcome throughout the radio world.
Copyright. 1928. by North American News
p&per -Anianee.l