If you invented it, you should be allowed to patent it. Especially, if it as ground breaking as flight would've been. I see no greed there. By that logic, the writer should head to North Korea and lead the life of a Comrade since the same could be said about capitalism too.
Yeah but the Wrights invented a method to solve the lateral instability problem. They shouldn't be able to patent all solutions to a problem, just the solution they invented, surely?
Thing is, as the courts and the USPTO found time and again, pretty much all subsequent solutions to that problem were non-significant variations of the Wrights' patent. Even Curtiss' own aileron patent was invalidated because the Wright patent was prior art.
Which is a shame because I don't see ailerons as a non-significant variation? Wing warping is as it says, which is pretty scary and went out fashion pretty quickly because of high rates of structural failure. Ailerons took its place because of this.
When you're yay high in the sky, which sounds safer? The difference is pretty significant.
I'm not saying what you say isn't true but it is pretty bizarre. That said the Wright Bros patent covered a wide area.
My non-informed opinion is that this is a basic science vs invention problem.
The Wright brothers were both inventors designing an invention (an airplane) and private-sector researchers investigating the basic science of flight. Their discovery of the problem of lateral instability and its consequences for flight was a matter of basic science; for it they deserved recognition from their peers and scientific acclaim. Their invention of a method for stabilizing flight deserved a patent.
By preventing people from simply copying their solution with a patent on their method, which puts up a nice big barrier to entry to everyone except innovators such as Curtiss.
