Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 U.S Alien Property Custodian Patent Documents: A Legacy Prior Art Collection from World War II Part 2, Statistics Michael J White, Librarian for Research Services, Engineering and Science Library, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 5C4 E-mail: michael.white@queensu.ca Abstract This is the second part of a two-part article on the origins, history and profile of Alien Property Custodian (APC) documents during World War II The APC was responsible for administering American property, including patents, seized from nationals of enemy and enemy-occupied countries Part one covered the wartime organization and activities of the APC, vesting orders and the agency’s patent portfolio Part two describes APC documents (patent applications published by U.S Patent Office at the request of the APC), the national and technological profiles of these documents and snapshots of the inventors who lost and, in some cases, regained their patent rights APC documents are a small and little known but historically important collection of prior art documents Keywords Alien Property Custodian; Enemy Property; Patent Applications; United States Patent Office; World War II 1.1 Introduction The APC was created in March 1942 for the express purpose of seizing enemyowned and controlled property Through the issuance of vesting orders it quickly amassed the largest patent portfolio in the U.S The APC’s principal goal in managing Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 its patents and patent applications was to disseminate the technical information disclosed in them as widely as possible to American industry [1] On December, 1942, the one-year anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt formally announced the government’s patent policy Vested enemy and enemy-controlled patents, Roosevelt declared, were the permanent property of the American people and would be made available to American industry for production and research purposes [2] Within days of the president’s announcement, APC Leo T Crowley, the agency’s chief administrator, outlined the details of the licensing program in an open letter to trade associations, chambers of commerce and corporate boards The APC offered royalty-free, non-exclusive licenses to any individual or business for an administrative fee of $50 for the first patent and $5 for each additional patent In response to this impressive offer Newsweek magazine dubbed Crowley the “Patent Santa Claus.” [3] 1.2 APC Moves to Publish Vested Applications The campaign to promote the use of vested patents was already well underway by December 1942 However, there was a serious legal obstacle to the dissemination of information contained in vested patent applications: under U.S patent law, pending patent applications remained confidential until a patent was granted, a process that could take months or even years Rather than wait for the normal legal process and deny American industry access to potentially important technical information, the APC instructed the Patent Office to publish copies of all vested pending applications and make them available for sale to the public The Patent Office complied and on 20 April, 1943, it published the first set of APC documents consisting of 285 applications in Class 260, Organic Chemistry Another 2,679 applications in classes 1-309 were published from 27 April through 13 July, 1943, for a total of 2,964 documents The Patent Office published APC documents on Tuesday, the same day it issued patents, and included lists of these documents in the Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 Official Gazette These lists were arranged by patent class and APC document number, and included title of the invention, principal inventor, inventor city and country of residence and publication date Not all vested applications were published Applications owned by APCcontrolled companies, such as General Aniline & Film, Rohm & Haas and the Schering Corporation were exempted from the APC’s directive These companies continued to prosecute their own applications under the direction of the APC Wartime invention secrecy rules prohibited the publication of some applications due to their importance to national security Also not included were the approximately 800 vested applications that issued as patents prior to April 1943 Although the APC vested a small number of applications after July 1943, there is no evidence that these were ever published This may be explained, in part, by the fact that many of these applications were divisional applications based on previously published APC documents Virtually all vested applications were for utility inventions One plant patent application (APC 443,971) for a rose was seized from Dutch horticulturist Johan Hendrik Kluis Only a handful of design patent applications were vested, most after January 1943, but none appear to have been published This is possibly due to their perceived limited technical and commercial value The lukewarm response of American companies to the licensing program may also have deterred the APC from publishing applications vested after July 1943 In that month, the APC changed its licensing fee to a flat $15 per patent or application in hope of generating more interest among American businesses [4] From January 1943 through 30 June, 1946, the APC issued only 2,012 licenses covering 7,903 vested patents and patent applications, or approximately 17 percent of the total [5] 1.2 Format of APC Documents The format of published APC applications closely resembles contemporary patents (See Figure 1.) The first page consists of the first drawing sheet Printed in Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 the upper left corner are the publication date and the initials A.P.C In the opposite corner is the application serial number, which does double duty as the APC document number The inventor’s name, title of the invention and filing date appear in the top center of the page The signatures of the inventor and his or her patent attorney appear at the bottom The remaining drawing sheets, if any, follow the front page and carry the same information in the header As is true with patents, not all APC documents have drawings [Insert Figure Facsimile of Claude Dornier’s published patent application (APC 231,882) for a twin-engine aircraft, a design later used in the Do 335 fighter (Drawing page and one page of the specification.)] Following the drawing pages is the written specification The publication date and serial number again appear in the top left and right corners, respectively Immediately below the date and serial number is the phrase “Alien Property Custodian,” presumably to distinguish APC documents from patents issued by the Patent Office Next appears the title of the invention, the inventor name, inventor city and country of residence, assignee information and filing date The main body of the specification is formatted in two columns with line numbers at increments of appearing in the margin between the columns The serial number appears at the top center of subsequent pages APC documents deviate in format from issued patents in two important respects First, the claims have been omitted from the specification APC documents also lack a proper patent classification, although copies obtained from the USPTO have a stamped class number in the upper left corner of the front page This may have been applied by Patent Office or APC staff as an aid in organizing APC documents by subject matter The lack of a proper patent classification on APC documents is inexplicable, although it may be related to the absence of claims in the specification or the fact that the Patent Office had no procedure for assigning classifications to pending applications In spite of the lack of claims and classification, Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 the U.S Patent and Trademark Office considers APC documents prior art and provides instructions for citing them in the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure [6] 1.4 APC Documents: Profile and Analysis The existence of this small collection of published patent applications raises a number of interesting questions First and foremost, of the 2,964 vested applications published in the spring of 1943 by the Patent Office, how many eventually issued as patents and how many were abandoned? What technologies, inventors and countries did they represent? What is their value as prior art and how frequently are they cited in patents? Exploring these and other questions is difficult because, to the best of the author’s knowledge, APC documents were not indexed in sci-tech literature indexes, such as Chemical Abstracts and Inspec, or patent databases It also appears that they were not classified in the public search files of the U.S Patent Office, although the USPTO does retain a bound set of APC documents in its public search facilities in Alexandria, Virginia Only a few other institutions are known to have complete sets of APC documents; these include the British Library, the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Boston Public Library In order to analyze the APC document collection, the author created a Microsoft Access database containing bibliographic data obtained from the lists of APC patent applications published in the Official Gazette from 20 April through 13 July, 1943 Database fields included class, serial number, title, inventor name, inventor city and country of residence and publication date Data was input exactly as it appeared in the Official Gazette; variant spellings of inventor and city names were not standardized A version of the database is available online [7] In order to determine the number of APC documents that may have issued as patents, a random sample of 300 APC document serial numbers was selected The serial number of each selected document was then searched in the EPO’s Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 esp@cenet® patent database If a match was found, the patent number and date of issue was recorded If no match was found, further searches were conducted in the USPTO PatFT database, the Official Gazette and the Annual Index of Patents Of the 300 selected documents, 127, or 42 percent, were matched with issued patents This suggests that up to 58 percent of APC published applications were abandoned and have no equivalent issued patent The APC annual report for 1952 indicates that as of 30 June 1,683 patent applications were still being prosecuted while 529 had been permanently abandoned [8] The current evidence suggests that no patents based on published vested applications were issued after 1953 As noted above, the USPTO considers APC documents to be valid prior art and provides explicit instructions for citing them in patents Although the USPTO did not classify APC documents in its public print or electronic search files, it is likely that patent examiners placed copies of APC documents in their own search files The fate of these examiner-held copies, if they exist, is unknown Over the years, applicants and patent examiners have cited APC documents using a variety of formats This makes it difficult to determine the number and frequency of APC documents that appear in patents However, it is possible to make a rough estimate using a variety of search strategies in multiple databases Searches in the USPTO Issued Patents (PatFT) database located about 100 patents issued since 1970 that cite APC documents Searches in Google Patents retrieved approximately 1,200 patents issued since 1947—when references were first included in printed patents—that cite APC documents The most recent patent (6,403,230) that cites an APC document was issued on 11 June, 2002 The cited APC document was APC 174,078, a “method of treating aluminum girders for use in airships,” published on May, 1943 The country and technology profiles of APC documents are similar to that of vested patents A total of 23 countries, including Great Britain, Switzerland and the United States, are represented (See Table 1.) Slightly more than 60 percent, or 1,756, of APC documents were filed by German inventors, including residents of Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 Austria after 1938 The other top ten countries included France (17.21 percent), Italy (6.51 percent), the Netherlands (5.84 percent), Hungary (2.34 percent), Japan (2.29 percent), Czechoslovakia (1.42 percent), Denmark (1.42 percent) and Belgium (1.21 percent) Four countries, Greece, Monaco, Hong Kong and Slovakia, had one application each Table APC Documents Ranked by Country of Inventor Residence Country Published Application s Percent Grand total 2,964 100% Germany1 France Italy Netherlands2 Hungary Japan Czechoslovakia Denmark Belgium Norway United States Switzerland Philippines Great Britain Rumania Poland Yugoslavia China (occupied) Luxembourg Greece Monaco Hong Kong Slovakia 1,756 509 190 159 70 68 42 42 36 29 4 2 1 1 60.66% 17.21% 6.51% 5.84% 2.34% 2.29% 1.42% 1.42% 1.21% 98% 3% 27% 24% 17% 13% 13% 1% 07% 07% 03% 03% 03% 03% Including residents of Austria, 1938-1945 Including residents of the Dutch East Indies APC documents span all technologies ranging from apparel to electron microscopes and aircraft designs to toy trains Five of the top ten classes are related to chemistry and plastics, emphasizing the importance of these fields in the 1930s and early 1940s (See Table 7.) Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 Table Top Ten Classes by Number of APC Documents Class 260 18 250 204 106 244 23 235 74 175 123 Class Title APC Published Applications Chemistry, carbon compounds Plastics Radiant energy Chemistry, electrical and wave energy Plastic compositions Aeronautics Chemistry Registers Machine elements and mechanisms Electricity, general applications Internal-combustion engine 345 109 91 81 64 62 60 58 58 57 51 Percent of Total (2,964) 11.64% 3.68% 3.07% 2.73% 2.16% 2.09% 2.02% 1.96% 1.96% 1.92% 1.72% Not surprisingly, Germany ranked first in most technologies but was especially dominant in organic chemistry, aeronautics, plastics and radiant energy (electromagnetic devices), e.g electron microscopes Approximately one third of APC documents originating in Germany were filed by inventors residing in metropolitan Berlin, Frankfurt-am-Main and Ludwigshafen, centers of German chemical and electronics research A significant number of German APC documents disclose ground-breaking innovations in electromagnetic devices and synthetic materials For example, two applications (APC 401,781 and 321,239) filed by Dr Ernst Ruska, a young scientist working for Siemens, disclosed inventions relating to electron microscopes From 1939 through early 1942, Ruska received an impressive 35 patents for electronic microscopes and related technologies In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work in designing the first electron microscope [9] Ruska earned more than 110 U.S and European patents for Siemens during his long and productive career In the field of synthetic fibers, Dr Paul Schlack, an I.G Farben researcher noted for inventing nylon 6, one of the first commercially produced nylon products, contributed ten APC documents Dr Schlack’s applications cover linear polyamides (APC 370,142), polyesters (APC 397,741) and cyctic amidines (APC 336,001) The Patent Office issued eight patents assigned to the APC After the war, Schlack Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 continued his research at Farberke Hoechst AG, eventually earning several dozen additional patents in the U.S and Europe The German inventor with the most vested applications (14) and the second highest total after the French engineer Charles Waseige was Winfrid Hentrich, a chemist working in the fields of dyes, soaps and detergents During his career he received an impressive 212 patents Many of Hentrich’s pre-war patents were assigned to I.G Farben, General Aniline Works and soap maker Henkel & Cie During the war the Patent Office issued patents on 11 of Hentrich’s vested applications German automotive and aeronautics designers are well represented in APC documents, among them Ferdinand Porsche, Fritz Nallinger, Erwin Komenda, Claude Dornier and Paul Focke Ferdinand Porsche is perhaps best-known for developing Germany’s first mass-market automobile, the Volksauto, at the request of Adolf Hitler [10] He and his company were also closely associated with the development of tanks and armoured vehicles during the war The Panzerjäger Tiger(P), a heavy assault gun designed by Porsche, was nicknamed the “Ferdinand” in his honour Appropriately, Porche’s only APC document (APC 260,252) discloses the design of a tractor steering mechanism The APC documents of Erwin Komenda, a close associate of Ferdinand Porsche and the long-serving chief of the Porsche body design department, include automobile bodies (APC 283,011) and interiors (APC 273,885) Komenda’s designs would later achieve their fullest expression in the 1950s and 1960s in the Volkswagen Beetle, Porsche 350 and Porsche 911 Komenda was also a member of the Porsche design team that created the Kübelwagen, the German Army’s equivalent of the U.S jeep, and the Schwimmwagen, an amphibious car also used by the military He received about 100 patents during his lifetime Fritz Nallinger, an engineer at Daimler-Benz, is listed on 10 APC documents, the fifth highest ranking total Nallinger’s designs include internal combustion engines (APC 332,506), drive mechanisms for aircraft engines (APC 330,323) and clutch transmissions (APC 196,718) Nallinger worked for Daimler-Benz for 43 years, Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 finally retiring in 1965 He received dozens of patents during his career and is best known for the development of all-round independent suspension, collapsible automobile chassis frames, a safety feature designed to absorb the shock of impact in a collision, and high-speed diesel engines There is evidence that Nallinger also worked on Hitler’s “wunderwaffen,” futuristic weapons the Führer dreamed of using against the Allies in retaliation for the bombing of German cities Recently, a German researcher has rediscovered Nallinger’s technical drawings of the “Amerika Bomber,” a jet-powered, long-range bomber capable of attacking the U.S [11] German aircraft pioneer Claude Dornier is credited on eight APC documents, including a design for an aircraft with pusher and puller propellers driven by two engines located in the nose and tail of the fuselage (APC 231,882) This unique configuration closely resembles the Dornier Do 335 “Arrow,” an advanced fighter Dornier designed for the Luftwaffe in 1943-44 (See Figure 2.) Capable of a maximum speed of 474 mph (763 km/h), the Do 335 was much faster than Allied fighters, but its late deployment in the final weeks of the war meant that it had virtually no chance of preventing Germany’s final defeat Dornier’s other APC applications cover air brakes (APC 252,298), aircraft engines (APC 226,191) and fuselage designs (APC 283,962) [Insert Figure Dornier Do 335A Fighter Captured by U.S Forces in 1945 Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University.] APC documents related to rotary-winged aircraft, a relatively new branch of aeronautics in the 1930s, include a control mechanism for helicopters (APC 272,042) invented by Henrich Focke, co-founder of the Focke-Wulf company Focke designed numerous aircraft, including several successful early helicopters Other German helicopter designs in the APC files include Austrian engineer Raoul Hafner’s narrowbodied helicopter (APC 223,406) and Anton Flettner’s helicopter (APC 254,867) The Patent Office granted both Hafner’s patent (2,338,935) and Focke’s patent (2,338,923) on 11 January, 1944 Flettner’s application apparently was abandoned 10 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 but is cited in about a dozen later patents All three men continued their productive careers after the war In the 1950s and 60s, Hafner produced numerous helicopterrelated patents for the Westland Aircraft and Bristol Aircraft companies Focke lived in Brazil from 1951-1956 where he designed and patented helicopter technology for the Brazilian Air Force Flettner, whose company produced helicopters for the Germany military until 1945, immigrated to America after the war and worked as a consultant and researcher for the U.S military until his death in 1961 [12] In addition to his contributions in the field of helicopters, he is also known for his work on auto-gyro aircraft and aircraft controls Another prolific German inventor found in the APC files is Felix Grandel, founder of the Dr Grandel Company, a manufacturer of natural health and beauty products Grandel’s 13 applications cover various methods for making vitamin preparations (APC 358,279), preparing fats and oils for injection (APC 360,386) and obtaining castor oil from castor beans (APC 340,847) Many of Grandel’s patents were abandoned, but the Patent Office did issue patents for his process of preparing peptone acides and their salts (2,356,581) and a method of preparing anhydrous compounds of penitols (2,375,915) In the 1950s and 1960s, Grandel obtained several additional U.S patents, including a method of making germ flakes (2,879,167) and pasta infused with wheat germ (2,819,969) Today, Dr Grandel is an international company with branches and subsidiaries in more than 40 countries [13] Perhaps the most interesting German inventor to be caught in the government’s dragnet was Fritz von Opel, the son of Wihelm von Opel and grandson of Adam Opel, leading pioneers in the German automobile industry Born in 1899, Fritz von Opel studied engineering at the technical university in Darmstadt; after graduation he joined the family firm, becoming Opel’s director of testing and, later, head of publicity, an assignment that appealed to his flamboyant personality In the 1920s, he developed an interest in using rockets for company publicity stunts With the help of the Spaceflight Society, an amateur rocket association whose members 11 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 included the future rocket scientist Werhner von Braun, von Opel built and drove several rocket-powered cars in 1928 In September 1929, he achieved international fame for piloting the RAK.1, the world’s first rocket-powered aircraft [14] Following the purchase of Opel by the General Motors Corporation in 1929, von Opel lost interest in rocketry and the automobile business and “retired” to Saint Moritz, Switzerland In May 1940, von Opel, traveling under a Lichtenstein passport, left Europe and settled in New York City For the next two years, von Opel and his wife Maria lived comfortably in the U.S., dividing their time between their homes in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida During this period von Opel had a burst of inventive energy, filing six patent applications including a gasoline dispensing device (APC 357,110), sheet metal fasteners (APC 431, 625 and APC 447,499), injection molding machines (APC 371,118 and APC 405,458) and a movable position finding device (APC 427,088) These applications account for six of the ten seized by the APC from enemy nationals living in the U.S In February 1942, government agents arrested the von Opels, who now claimed Luxembourg citizenship, at their Palm Beach home Five months later, the APC seized von Opel’s patent applications The gasoline dispensing device was issued a patent (2,307,435) on January 5, 1943 and the remaining five applications were published by the Patent Office several months later In March 1945, APC patent attorneys filed a divisional application (584,599) based on von Opel’s 1942 application (APC 431,625) for a sheet metal fastener Interestingly, von Opel’s residence in the application is given as Algiers, Louisiana Both von Opels spent most of the war in civilian internment camps Based on the residence information in his 1945 application, it is likely that Fritz was living in Camp Algiers, an internment camp outside of New Orleans administered by the U.S Immigration and Naturalization Service The residents of Camp Algiers included significant numbers of German Jews and anti-Nazis who had been harassed by pro-Nazis in other internment camps [15] Following his release in 1945, von Opel made several unsuccessful attempts to 12 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 reclaim his property, including his patents and a Massachusetts brewery He eventually returned to Switzerland where he continued to invent, obtaining several French, German, Swiss and U.S patents for skis, ski bindings and sailboat cleats He died in Switzerland in 1971 France’s top fields were organic chemistry, electromagnetic devices and aeronautics More than 50 percent of French APC documents were filed by inventors residing in Paris, Lyon, Neuilly-sur-Seine and Clichy The inventor from any country with the highest total number of published applications (19) was French aeronautics designer Charles Raymond Waseige, chief engineer at the Henri and Maurice Farman aircraft works in Billancourt, a suburb of Paris Waseige was a prolific inventor with more than 50 U.S patents issued from the 1920s through the 1940s Of the 19 Waseige applications published by the APC, 15 became patents, the last (2,454,293) being a multi-drive gear box for auxiliary accessories on aircraft issued on 11 November, 1948 Other well-known French aircraft designers in the APC files include Émile Dewoitine and World War I ace René Fonck Fonck’s design for a fighter plane with fixed forward and rearward pointing guns was issued a patent (2,358,919) on 26 September, 1944 Dewoitine developed several advanced fighters for the French Air Force, including the Dewoitine D.520 His application (APC 323,301) for a hydroplane with folding wings appears to have been abandoned but his second application for a machine for milling flanges on airplane wing spars was granted a patent (2,356,571) on 22 August, 1944 Accused of collaborating with the Germans, Dewoitine left France in 1944 and moved to Spain and then Argentina He eventually returned to France and died there in 1979 After Charles Waseige, France’s most prolific inventors in the APC files were Marcel Schlumberger and Jacques Couëlle Schlumberger and his brother Conrad were pioneers in the development of seismic measuring devices for mapping subsurface rock formations, a technology that greatly advanced the science of oil exploration and production In 1934, they founded the Schlumberger Well Surveying 13 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 Corp and in 1940 moved the company to Houston, Texas In 1941, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers awarded the Schlumbergers the Anthony F Lucas gold medal in recognition of their achievements [16] Schlumberger’s APC applications disclose designs for explosive cartridges (APC 403,648), well casing perforators (APC 403,650), and coring tools (APC 271,524) used in well drilling Today, Schlumberger Limited and its subsidiary companies are recognized as the world leaders in project management, information services and drilling technology for the oil and gas industry Jacques Couëlle was a French architect specializing in faux historical buildings and avant-garde structures His APC applications cover methods for constructing light timber frameworks (APC 450,223), a structural design that imparted greater strength and flexibility to reinforced concrete (APC 432,392) and tubular elements made of clay (APC 432,393) In addition to four U.S patents, Couëlle’s building structures, frames and supports would receive dozens of patents in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s In the 1960s, Couëlle designed Castellaras le Vieux, a community of homes built to resemble an old Provenỗal village, and Castellaras Le Neuf, a collection of modern, cave-like dwellings derided by some as atomic fallout shelters [17] The French television engineer Henri Georges de France of Lyon tied Couëlle with seven vested applications His inventions include television receivers (APC 428,973) and transmission systems (APC 429,583) In the decades after the war, de France was influential in the development of television in Europe and is credited with inventing SECAM, the color television standard adopted in the 1960s by France, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Four of de France’s vested applications were abandoned but three were issued patents, the final (2,582,013), issued on January, 1952, disclosed a motion picture projector for the successive projection of multiple films During his career he obtained approximately 131 patents worldwide, including several he reclaimed from the APC 14 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 Italy and the Netherlands were the third and fourth countries with the highest number of published applications APC documents seized from Dutch inventors were concentrated in organic chemistry, electromagnetic energy and electronics Nearly one third of Dutch applications vested by the APC originated in Eindhoven, home of Philips Electronics However, the Dutch inventor with the most APC documents, a Julius Wolff of Anstenrade, specialized in more traditional subject matter: sausage making The Patent Office granted patents on four of his seven improvements in making artificial sausage casings (2,350,857, 2,460,480, etc.) The Netherlands contributed the only known plant patent application (APC 443,971), a new variety of dwarf rose plant resistant to disease and mildew, seized by the APC The inventors, Johan Hendrik Kluis and Anthony Kluis of Boskoop, were granted a patent (PP707) in 1946 Johan had received two earlier patents (PP276 and PP415) for hydrangea plants in 1937 and 1940 In 1949, the APC transferred ownership of the 1946 patent to a Gerard K Klyn of Ohio; Mr Klyn’s relationship to the Hendriks is not known, but he is described in the patent as having conducted field trials on the plant Plastics, organic chemistry and aeronautics are common themes in APC documents seized from Italian inventors Italian chemist Guilio Natta’s inventions cover the production of glycerol (APC 295,616), butadiene (APC 340,228) and ketoalcohols (APC 340,225) Natta, one of the most prolific scientists of the 20th Century, was awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discoveries in the field of polymers He would eventually earn more than 500 patents and publish over 500 scientific papers during his career [17] In the field of aeronautic safety, Giuseppe Lisi’s applications (APC 357,045 and 340,196) disclose designs for parachutes with variable surfaces He received two patents (2,371,898 and 2,342,287) on 22 February, 1944 and 20 March, 1945 The Italian inventor with the most vested applications was Dr Antonio Ferretti of Milan Ferretti’s numerous applications (APC 348,993, 348,994, 382,773, etc.) cover innovations in artificial textiles and fibers, specifically the manufacture of 15 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 synthetic wool from casein, a protein found in milk and cheese Ferretti’s discovery in the mid-1930s was a boon to Italian textile manufacturers who were experiencing great difficulty importing wool on account of international sanctions imposed after Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia Snia Viscosa, Italy’s largest textile firm, purchased Ferretti’s patents and produced the material under the commercial name Lanital Lanital was hailed as miracle fabric and a solution to surplus stocks of dairy products It was warm and soft like natural wool but did not shrink when wet However, its threads were said to be much weaker and more susceptible to bacterial attack than wool fibers Nevertheless, Snia Viscosia, with the support of the Italian government, announced plans to establish Lanital manufacturing plants worldwide [19] The war curtailed Lanital’s global ambitions and its fortunes in the post-war years suffered from the development of better synthetic fibers Seven of Dr Ferretti’s applications issued as patents assigned to the APC He received numerous patents in Europe, Canada and the U.S through the 1950s Few APC applications disclose designs for weapons, ordnance, ammunition and explosives, which is not surprising given the tendencies of governments in the 1930s and 1940s to classify their military technologies The German engineer Hugo Schmeisser, co-inventor of the Schmeisser MP40 submachine gun, one of the most famous small-arms of World War II, surrendered just one application for a device for controlling gas pressure in automatic weapons (APC 361,184) Switzerland-based weapons designer Wolfgang Rossmanith’s APC documents include designs for antitank rifles (APC 357,976), rapid-firing guns (APC 285,144) and a telescopic site for guns (APC 271,134) Several of Rossmanith’s pre-war patents for various firearm improvements were assigned to Rheinmetall-Borsig A.G of Dusseldorf, Germany Rheinmetall manufactured small arms, guns and artillery pieces for the Germany military; one of its best known products was the famed German 88mm antiaircraft/anti-tank gun 16 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 In addition to the dozens of well-known and accomplished inventors in the APC files, there are hundreds of unknown characters and forgotten inventions For example, who was King Theodor Limm of Soerabaja, Netherlands East Indies and why was he interested in improvements to metallic tins (APC 415,522)? Did Otto Lesser of Berlin achieve commercial success with his breeches (APC 434,119)? What ever became of Demeter Apostolou’s device for neutralizing the inertia of a vehicle body And why was James P Robinson in Tokyo, Japan in 1941 developing medicinal applicators (APC 388,441)? 1.5 Conclusion: the Future of APC Documents APC documents are orphans For a few brief years in the mid-1940s, they were the centerpiece of a high-profile government program to disseminate enemy technical information Today, however, few remember them and perhaps even less care why or how they came to be The agency responsible for their creation, the Alien Property Custodian, no longer exists, its mission and activities a mere footnote in the vast history of World War II APC documents resemble patent documents but they are not patents; they have never been classified with other patent documents The agency that published them, the U.S Patent and Trademark Office, has chosen not to integrate them into its paper or electronic patent search systems They not appear in sci-tech and patent literature databases Few print search tools exist for searching them APC documents have value and more can and should be done to make them accessible to the public, historians, patent attorneys and patent information professionals They are considered prior art, although they are cited infrequently in patents (Would that be the case if they were classified with other patent documents?) APC documents are potentially valuable to historians of 20th Century science and technology They provide a snapshot of technology in the 1930s and 1940s, some of which may not have been published in patents or other scientific and 17 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 technical publications Most importantly, APC documents are primary sources that document a unique event in the history of the U.S patent system, a time of national crisis when the U.S government overruled patent regulations and seized patent rights Although the author’s initial research suggests that the majority of APC documents were abandoned, further investigation is required A systematic search of all APC documents must be undertaken in order to determine the exact number that became patents Fortunately, this task is made easier by the availability of patent databases such as the EPO’s esp@cenet® system and Google Patents It is the author’s intent to add this information to his existing database of APC documents The small number of complete sets of APC documents in libraries and archives worldwide makes them vulnerable to accidental loss, damage or destruction In order to ensure their long-term preservation, the next logical step would be a project to scan and digitize all extant APC documents Fortunately, there are currently several large-scale digital scanning projects underway that might accomplish this task, provided that one of the participating libraries owns a complete set of APC documents If such a project is accomplished, APC documents will last well into the 21st Century and beyond Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance in the researching of this paper: Jan Comfort, Clemson University; Marie Ghilini, European Patent Office; Neil Massong and Tom Turner, U.S Patent and Trademark Office; Shannon Stipe, Linda Hall Library; and Stephen van Dulken, The British Library References [1] White, M U.S Alien Property Custodian Documents: a Legacy Prior Art Collection from World War II (in press) 18 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 [2] Anon Free patents Business Week, 19 December 1942: 19-20 [3] Anon Patent grab bag Newsweek, 21 December, 1942; 20: 62 [4] Anon Fee on foreign patents reduced The New York Times, 10 July 1943: 16 [5] Alien Property Custodian Annual report Office of Alien Property Custodian Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946: 98 [6] U.S Patent and Trademark Office Alien Property Custodian Publications, Section 901.06(c) In Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, 8th ed., Aug 2006 Revision Retrieved on 26 November, 2006, from USPTO: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/0900_901_06_c.htm#sect901 06c [7] White M Database of APC Documents 2006 Available at http://library.queensu.ca/apcdocuments/ [8] Attorney General of the United States Annual Report of the Alien Property Office Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952: 48 [9] Nobel Foundation Autobiography of Ernst Ruska Retrieved on 17 December, 2006 from http://nobelprize.org: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1986/ruska-autobio.html [10] Tolischus, O.D Nazi hopes ride the “volksauto.” New York Times, 16 October, 1938: 129 [11] Wulf, D Hitler’s “Amerika Bomber.” The Atlantic Monthly May 2004: 41 [12] Anon Anton Flettner, inventor, was 76 New York Times, 30 December, 1961: 19 [13] Dr Grandel Group: http://www.grandel.de/ [14] von Opel, F Rocket planes soars in uncanny flight New York Times, October, 1929: [15] Friedman, M P Nazis and good neighbors: the United States campaign against the Germans of Latin America Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 165 [16] Anon Win engineers’ medal: Marcel Schlumberger and late brother named by mining group New York Times, 22 November 1940: 39 19 Citation: White, M (2008) U.S Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2, statistics World Patent Information, 30, 2008, 34-42 [17] Littell, R Casterallas—Where all the houses bear one man’s imprint New York Times, 16 January, 1972, p XX10 [18] Nobel Foundation Biography of Giulio Natta Retrieved on 17 December, 2006 from http://nobelprize.org: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1963/natta-bio.html [19] Caesin fiber plant for the U.S is planned New York Times, 24 November, 1937: 20