Patent Settlement
The Guggenheim Foundation and Goddard's estate filed suit in 1951 against the U.S. government for prior infringement of Goddard's patents. In 1960, the parties settled the suit, and the U.S. armed forces and NASA paid out an award of $1 million (half went to his wife), at that time the highest government settlement ever paid in a patent case.
The settlement amount exceeded the total of all the funding for Goddard's work throughout his entire career.
Read more about this topic: Robert H. Goddard
Famous quotes containing the words patent and/or settlement:
“The cigar-box which the European calls a lift needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the mans patent purgeit works”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (18951990)