Evening star., 1928-12-04
COURT OF APPEALS
GETS RADIO CASE
Ownership of Ether Lanes
Involved in WGY Suit
> Against Commission.

Determination of the rights of radio
and the fixing of the focal point for
legal regulation, today went into the
hands of the District of Columbia
Court of Appeals and with its decision
rests the question of ownership of lanes
of communication, vaster, perhaps, than
the rights of way of railroads or the
cable and wire lines of the telegraph
and telephone companies of the country.
Following the filing of a supple
mentary brief by both sides containing
a resume OF the entire case within the
next 90 days, the District Circuit Court
will render its decision on the appeal
of the General Electric Co., owner of
radio broadcaSting station WGY, which
has brought for the first time into a
court of the United States che question
of who owns the lanes through which
the mysterious electrical impulses which
constitute radio travel.
Like "a house or cards" in the face
of any change is the present status of
the wave-band ALLEGATIONS of the Fed
eral Radio Commission, the counsel for
the commission, Louis G. Caldwell, told
the Circuit Court judges this morning
The court has heard in the past two
days of matters relating only to the
long wave lengths used at present by
broadcasting stations in the dissemina-
ton of programs as they are heard at
millions of fireSides nightly, but their
decision, it is admitted by both sides
of the controversy, will stretch into,
that vast field of radio, the shorter
wave lengths.
Charles Evans Hughes. chief counsel
for the General Electric Co., spent more
than two hours before the court yester-
day afternoon arguing that in its prior
possession of a clear channel in radio
since 1923 had been established for
WGY a superior right to that channel,
which, barring abuse of its right or vio-
lation of the law in its use. it is entitled
to as matter of property right.
It is in the defense of this claimed
right that the General Electric Co. has
filed its appeal from the decision of the
Federal Radio Commission which, in
its recent reallocation of wave channels,
took from WGY the channel it had been
using and gave it to station owned by
the same company on the Pacific Coast.
The argument of the Federal Radio
Commission has been based on the laws
under which the commission was FORM
ed and upon the regulations which have
been used to bring some semblance of
order out of the chaos which came with
the springing up all over the country
of radio stations broadcasting and clut-
tering the air to such an extent that
the hearthside reception was, at times,
badly muddled and distorted.
The case in question itself is big
one, comparatively. The General Elec-
trice Co. points out that capital of
s1.500,000 has been invested in the
powerful WGY station and that that
investment is nullified by the action of
the commission in its failure to renew
its full-time, clear channel license. 1t
now has only limited license and is
allowed to be on the air on its old wave
channel of 100 kilocycles until dark
ness would link it on the same band
with the Oakland Calf, station, KGO,
to which the wave band has been al
lotted Counsel for the appellants have
pointed out that those hours which