Prize Fight

Twenty-seven designers and manufacturers signified their entry into the Guggenheim Fund world-wide safe aircraft contest after it opened two years ago. Rewards were to include $100,000 for the safest plane and $10.000 for each of five safe ones which could meet the competition's harsh but just tests. Only 15 planes appeared at Mitchel Field, L. I.. for trial. Six withdrew without trying. Others failed. Last week only two possible winners remained, the slotted-wing Curtiss (TIME, Jan. 6) and Frederick Handley Page's slotted-wing entry, an English make. The Handley Page failed, although only because it could not glide for three minutes at 38 m. p. h. or less, as the Tanager succeeded in doing.

So to the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co. went the $100.000 prize, and to the Federal Court in Brooklyn went Frederick Handley Page with a lawsuit for $300,000 (the prize money tripled), claiming that the Tanager's slotted wing was an infringement of his patent.

Quickly the Curtiss people retaliated. They got the court to order the Handley Page entry held in the U. S. as evidence of contempt of court. Circumstances: In 1921, the Curtiss Company won an injunction restraining Handley Page "henceforth and forever" from importing any aviation products to the U. S., because the English company was using certain Curtiss devices. In England Curtiss had no redress. But they could keep Handley Page out of the U. S. The revival of their injunction was a Curtiss move to prove that Handley Page was prosecuting the $300,000 lawsuit without "clean hands." Probable outcome: an exchange of patents.

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