TALKIE PATENT RIGHTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20242, 30 April 1929, Page 11

TALKIE PATENT RIGHTS.

LITIGATION 1% LONDON.

A EUROPEAN COMBINE..

CHALLENGE TO AMERICANS, (Received April 29, 10.45 p.m.) United Service. LONDON, April 23. A sensational challenge to the Western Electric Company's vigorous offensive in Britain is foreshadowed in an announcement in the Observer. This is to the effect that a. European talkie combine has offered to acquire British Instructional Films with a view to the production o\ talkie;, in England on a large scale.

The deal would link up the most firmly established British producers with the European group which holds more than 500 patents for the film and disc methods of recording. The combine would be capable of competing with America in regard to cost, technical efficiency and immediate output in commercial quantities.

Hostilities will be commenced on Tuesday in the Court of Chancery. Three German inventors, whose patents are owned by the European combine, are seeking to restrain the Hyde Park Cinemas from showing sound films over the Western Electric apparatus on the ground that it is an infringement of their basic patents.

Tho Western Electric Company, the resources of which are enormous, is fighting the defendants' case. Tho proprietors of 200 cinemas, who have made contracts with the Western Electric Company. are dismayed at the possibility of a protracted legal battle involving the attendance of inventors and experts from all over the world. - .