Henry Fox Talbot - Patenting Controversy

Patenting Controversy

The work on the Daguerre process was taking place at the same time as that of William Fox Talbot in England on the calotype process. To protect his own invention, Daguerre had to register himself the patent for Britain. French government pensioned him to set his invention free to the world (even when William Fox Talbot was selling illegal licenses to British photographers where it was used instead of the Daguerreotype).

In February 1841, Talbot obtained a patent for the calotype process. At first, he was selling individual patent licences for £20 each, but later he lowered the fee to £4 and waived the payment for those who wished to use the process only as amateurs. Professional photographers, however, had to pay up to £300 annually. In a business climate where many patent holders were attacked for enforcing their rights, Talbot's behaviour was widely criticized, especially after 1851 when Frederick Scott Archer publicized the collodion process. Talbot declared that anyone using Archer's process would still be liable to get a license for calotype.

One reason Talbot patented the calotype was that he had spent many thousands of pounds on the development of the calotype process over several years. It is also significant that, although the daguerreotype process was supposed to be free to the world, Daguerre secured a British patent on his own process. Talbot's negative/positive process eventually succeeded as the basis for almost all 19th and 20th century photography. The daguerreotype was rarely used by photographers after 1860 and had died as a commercial process by 1865.

One person who tried to use the daguerreotype as a method of reproduction without Talbot's process was Levett Landon Boscawen Ibbetson. But as good as Ibbetson's attempts were at producing something like a lithograph from the original daguerrotype, the end result could not compete with Talbot's process. They were simply too expensive. Ibbetson began experimenting with Talbot's calotype, and in 1842 wrote to Talbot "I have been going on with experiments in the Callotype & have had some very good results as to depth of Colour." By 1852, Capt. Ibbetson was showing his book using the Talbot calotype process, called "Le Premier Livre Imprimè par le Soleil" at a London Society of Arts exhibition.

The calotype or talbotype (he used these names interchangeably) was Talbot's improvement of his earlier photogenic drawing process by the use of a different silver salt (silver iodide instead of silver chloride) and a developing agent (gallic acid and silver nitrate) to bring out a latent image on the exposed paper. This reduced the minimum exposure time in the camera from over an hour to only a minute or two. The translucent calotype negative made it possible to produce as many positive prints as desired by simple contact printing; the daguerreotype was an opaque direct positive that could only be reproduced by copying it with a camera. On the other hand, the calotype, despite waxing of the negative to make the image clearer, still was not pin sharp like the metallic daguerreotype, as the paper fibres degraded the image produced.

The problem was resolved in 1851 (the year of Daguerre's death) when the wet collodion process enabled glass to be used as a support; the lack of detail often found in calotype negatives was removed, and sharp images, similar in detail to the daguerreotype, were created. The wet collodion negative not only brought about the end of the calotype in commercial use, but also spelled the end of the daguerreotype as a common process for portraiture.

In August 1852, The Times published an open letter by Lord Rosse, the President of the Royal Society, and Charles Lock Eastlake, the president of the Royal Academy, who called on Talbot to relieve his patent pressure that was perceived as stifling the development of photography. In his response, Talbot agreed to waive licensing fees for amateurs, but he continued to pursue professional portrait photographers, having filed several lawsuits.

In 1854, Talbot applied for an extension of the 14-year patent. At that time one of his lawsuits, against a photographer Martin Laroche, was heard by the court. The Talbot v. Laroche case was the pivotal point of the story. Laroche's side argued that the patent was invalid, as a similar process was invented earlier by Joseph Reade, and that using the collodion process does not infringe the calotype patent anyway, because of significant differences between the two processes. In the verdict, the jury upheld the calotype patent but agreed that Laroche was not infringing upon it by using the collodion process. Disappointed by the outcome, Talbot chose not to extend his patent.