Editing Aileron (section)

=== Patents and lawsuits ===

The Wright Brothers' Ohio patent attorney [[Harry Aubrey Toulmin, Sr.|Henry Toulmin]] filed an expansive patent application and on May 22, 1906, the brothers were granted U.S. Patent 821393.<ref name="Wright brothers patent 821393" /> The patent's importance lay in its claim of a new and useful method of ''controlling'' an airplane. The patent application included the claim for the lateral control of aircraft flight that was not limited to wing warping, but through any manipulation of the "....angular relations of the lateral margins of the airplanes [wings].... varied in opposite directions".  Thus the patent explicitly stated that other methods besides wing-warping could be used for adjusting the outer portions of an airplane's wings to different angles on its right and left sides to achieve lateral roll control. [[John J. Montgomery]] was granted U.S. Patent 831173 <ref>{{cite web|url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US831173|title=U.S. Patent #831,173}}</ref> at nearly the same time for his methods of wing warping. Both the Wright Brothers patent and Montgomery's patent were reviewed and approved by the same patent examiner at the United States Patent Office, William Townsend.<ref>Harwood CS, Fogel GB, "Quest for Flight: John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West, University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. p. 124.</ref> At the time Townsend indicated that both methods of wing warping were invented independently and were sufficiently different to each justify their own patent award.

Multiple U.S. court decisions favoured the expansive Wright patent, which the Wright Brothers sought to enforce with licensing fees starting from $1,000 per airplane,<ref name="Air & Space Mag-2009.09-Crouch" /><ref name="Hayes" /> and said to range up to $1,000 per day.<ref name="Casey-preface" /> According to Louis S. Casey, a former curator of the [[National Air and Space Museum|Smithsonian Air & Space Museum]] in Washington, D.C., and other researchers, due to the patent they had received the Wrights stood firmly on the position that all flying using lateral roll control, anywhere in the world, would only be conducted under license by them.<ref name="Casey-preface" />

The Wrights subsequently became embroiled with numerous lawsuits they launched against aircraft builders who used lateral flight controls, and the brothers were consequently blamed for playing "...a major role in the lack of growth and aviation industry competition in the United States comparative to other nations like Germany leading up to and during World War I".<ref name="Hayes" /> Years of protracted legal conflict ensued with many other aircraft builders until the U.S. entered World War I, when the government imposed a legislated agreement among the parties which resulted in royalty payments of 1% to the Wrights.<ref name="Casey-preface" />

{{Further|Wright brothers patent war}}