Three suits were brought in the District Court for Delaware against the respondent as exclusive license under three separate patents issued to Francis W. Dunmore and Percival D. Lowell. The bills recite that the inventions were made while the patentees were employed in the radio laboratories of the Bureau of Standards, and are therefore, in equity, the property of the United States. The prayers are for a declaration that the respondent is a trustee for the government, and, as such, required to assign to the United States all its right, title, and interest in the patents, for an accounting of all moneys received as licensee, and for general relief. The District Court consolidated the cases for trial, and after a hearing dismissed the bills. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the decree.
The courts below concurred in findings which are not challenged and, in summary, are:
The Bureau of Standards is a subdivision of the Department of Commerce. Its functions consist in the custody of standards; the comparison of standards used in scientific investigations, engineering, manufacturing, commerce, and educational institutions with those adopted or recognized by the government; the construction of standards, their multiples or subdivisions; the testing and calibration of standard measuring apparatus; the solution of problems which arise in connection with standards; and the physical properties of materials. In 1915 the Bureau was also charged by Congress with the duty of investigation and standardization of methods and instruments employed in radio communication, for which special appropriations were made. In recent years it has been engaged in research and testing work of various kinds for the benefit of private industries, other departments of the government, and the general public.
The Bureau is composed of divisions, each charged with a specified field of activity, one of which is the electrical division. These are further subdivided into sections. One section of the electrical division is the radio section. In 1921 and 1922 the employees in the laboratory of this section numbered approximately twenty men doing technical work and some draftsmen and mechanics. The twenty were engaged in testing radio apparatus and methods and in radio research work. They were subdivided into ten groups, each group having a chief. The work of each group was defined in outlines by the chief or alternate chief of the section.
Dunmore and Lowell were employed in the radio section and engaged in research and testing in the laboratory. In the outlines of laboratory work the subject of 'airplane radio' was assigned to the group of which Dunmore was chief and Lowell a member. The subject of 'radio receiving sets' was assigned to a group of which J. L. Preston was chief, but to which neither Lowell nor Dunmore belonged.
In May, 1921, the Air Corps of the Army and the Bureau of Standards entered into an arrangement whereby the latter undertook the prosecution of forty-four research projects for the benefit of the Air Corps. To pay the cost of such work, the Corps transferred and allocated to the Bureau the sum of $267,500. Projects Nos. 37 to 42, inclusive, relating to the use of radio in connection with aircraft, were assigned to the radio section and $25,000 was allocated to pay the cost of the work. Project No. 38 was styled 'visual indicator for radio signals,' and suggested the construction of a modification of what was known as an 'Eckhart recorder.' Project No. 42 was styled 'airship bomb control and marine torpedo control.' Both were problems of design merely.
In the summer of 1921 Dunmore, as chief of the group to which 'airplane radio' problems had been assigned, without further instructions from his superiors, picked out for himself one of these navy problems, that of operating a relay for remote control of bombs on airships and torpedoes in the sea, 'as one of particular interest and having perhaps a rather easy solution, and worked on it.' In September he solved it.