Читать книгу The Inventive Life of Charles Hill Morgan: The Power of Improvement In Industry, Education and Civic Life - Allison Chisolm - Страница 26

Having seen the world markets available to a Clinton business owner in his experience with Erastus Bigelow, Morgan also moved to secure his rights overseas and expand the paper bag business to European markets. British inventor George Tomlinson Bousfield of Loughborough Park, Brixton, had secured a provisional patent for a paper bag making apparatus on September 29, 1858, based on a certificate from the Office of the Commissioners of Patents for Inventions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Through Bigelow’s London attorneys, Messrs. Carpmael & Co., Morgan contacted Bousfield and acquired rights to Bousfield’s British patent, numbered 2172.

Together with his partners Whitney and Priest, Morgan found someone they thought would be willing to build a European business with the paper bag machines, George Shaw Harwood of Stroud in Gloucestershire. In February 1860, Morgan had Bousfield’s patent assigned to Harwood. Once the transfer was legally made, as the agreement with Harwood stated, “they will place a complete bag machine built according to said Patent on board a suitable vessel bound to England, and consigned to the said Harwood.”

Harwood would then “take suitable measures to introduce said bag machines into public notice and use in England, to build all machines required for use there, and to grant licenses for the use of said machines as extensively as he shall find it advantageous to do so.” He agreed to keep the patent current by paying all required fees to the British government, and could seek out patents for the machine in other European countries, splitting the costs with Morgan, Whitney and Priest.

In exchange for use of the first machine, Harwood agreed to pay the partners an annual royalty or tariff of $150, and another $150 for each additional machine he built and licensed to others for the duration of the patent’s 14-year term. He also guaranteed that, within two and half years from the first machine’s arrival in England, the partners would receive an annual income of $1,500. If he could not maintain this level of business, he would reconvey the patent rights to them while continuing to pay royalties on the machines he had under license.

The agreement designated a merchant in Boston to receive the semiannual royalty payments, which “shall be deemed seasonably made if remitted from England by first mails leaving upon or after said first day of January and of July in each year.”

The experiment was short-lived, failing for reasons that remain unclear. A letter in August 1860 from Morgan to Harwood acknowledges his letter of apology and asks that he return the machine to Philadelphia where he hoped to put it into operation. Morgan requested that Harwood assign the English patent back to him “unless you are now willing to carry out the contract.”

Other letters indicate that as early as May 1860, Whitney was prepared to buy the English machine “and the extra former made for Mr. Harwood” for $490.