George Selden Receives a Patent for a Road Engine

An Application That Waited

George B. Selden was a patent lawyer in Rochester, New York, and an amateur inventor. In 1879 he applied for a patent on a vehicle driven by an internal combustion engine, which he called a road engine. Instead of letting the application move to approval, he kept it alive through a series of amendments, which delayed the grant until November 5, 1895. Under the law then in force a patent lasted seventeen years from its date of issue, so the delay pushed its protection forward into the age when automobiles were starting to appear.

What the Patent Covered

The patent described a carriage with a liquid-fuel engine of a design based on one invented by the American engineer George Brayton, together with a clutch and gearing. Selden had not built a commercially working car by then, and the design as patented was not the form of engine that later proved best. The broad wording nevertheless allowed its owners to claim that any gasoline automobile in the United States depended on it. In 1899 Selden sold his rights to a group of investors, who formed the Electric Vehicle Company.

A Toll on Every Car

In 1903 the group set up the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, which collected a royalty on every car sold by its members. Most manufacturers paid. Henry Ford refused, and the association sued his company. Ford fought the case in public, advertising that buyers of his cars would be protected, and the contest dragged on for years. A federal court ruled for Selden in 1909, which Ford appealed.

Ford’s Victory in Court

In January 1911 the Court of Appeals decided that the patent was valid but narrow. It applied only to automobiles with the Brayton-type engine described in it, and Ford and most other manufacturers used the Otto-cycle engine, which was different. The ruling effectively ended the royalty system. The case is often retold as the story of an inventor who never built a successful car and still nearly controlled an industry, and it remains a lesson in how broadly worded patents can shape an emerging technology. The first practical gasoline automobile belongs to European inventors such as Karl Benz, who patented his motor car in Germany in 1886.

Selden After the Verdict

Selden had a car built in 1905 to show that his design could work, and a small company in Rochester later made motor trucks under his name until the 1930s. He died in 1922, having seen both the success of the automobile industry and the narrowing of his own patent. Historians generally describe the Selden patent as a financial and legal device more than a technical invention, but it also helped shape how the early industry organized itself, and the pressure of the lawsuit led manufacturers to cooperate and to share patents in later years.