City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

99 PERCENT PERSPIRATION 73
The most daunting blow may have been the collapse of American Optical’s
vaunted patent position. O’Brien and American Optical lawyers thought they
had an airtight case for priority on the crucial concept of the clad fiber.
Hansell’s 1930 patent covered imaging, but by the time O’Brien’s patent was
issued on March 4, 1958, 61 it was clear that imaging needed clad fibers.
O’Brien had licensed American Optical, so the company turned its lawyers
loose on potential competitors. American Cystoscope Makers was at the top
of the list.
An American Cystoscope lawyer did some legwork and found a copy of
the issue of De Ingenieur containing van Heel’s paper. That was something no
one at American Optical had seen. Van Heel had sent American Optical only
a reprint, with ‘‘De Ingenieur, No. 24, 1953’’ printed on the cover and the
handwritten date ‘‘12/6/53.’’ 62 The sharp-eyed lawyer saw the crucial publication
date on the magazine cover: June 12, 1953. He must have chortled
with glee as he copied it to send to American Optical.
It is not enough for an inventor to show that he or she was the first to
have an idea. The inventor must apply for a American patent no more than
a year after the idea is first described in public anywhere in the world. The
American Optical legal department had interpreted the handwritten date in
American style as December 6, 1953, which gave them plenty of time to file
their application. They didn’t remember that Europeans write dates differently,
with the date before the month. When the lawyers filed the patent
application November 19, 1954, they had missed the proper deadline by over
five months. ‘‘We knew the game was up’’ when the copy of the cover arrived,
recalls Siegmund. 63 An angry Brian O’Brien felt cheated.
American Optical did not give up easily. With its star patent worthless,
the company pressed an application Norton had filed on glass cladding. However,
Curtiss had filed his application earlier in 1957. A determined attack by
a horde of American Optical lawyers made the Curtiss patent one of the most
litigated in history, but it survived to issue in 1971—a delay that ironically
increased royalty payments. 64
More Uses for Fibers
While the lawyers battled, the young field grew. The Michigan group, American
Cystoscope Makers, Mosaic Fabrications, and American Optical concentrated
on making practical instruments. Both Mosaic Fabrications and American
Optical found new uses for fused fiber optics. They made fused bundles
in which a special glass filled the space between fibers; etching away the filler
glass left loose fibers. They twisted bundles of hot glass fibers in the middle,
so when they cooled the image appeared upside down. They interleaved sheets
of fibers into Y-shaped bundles that could combine or split images. They tapered
bundles so that they shrank or magnified images, a wonder Dave Garroway
demonstrated on his nationwide television show, Today. 65