WIRELESS PATENTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21980, 15 June 1933, Page 8

WIRELESS PATENTS

PAYMENT OF ROYALTIES TERMINATION OF AGREEMENT (Pee United Press Association..' WELLINGTON, June 14. Notice of intention to terminate the present agreement under which Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia), Ltd., receives a royalty on all fees paid by radio listeners has been served on the company by the Government. About three months ago similar action was taken by the Federal Government of Australia. New Zealand listeners pay an annual license fee of 30s, and of this sum 3s is paid ovbr to Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia), Ltd., as royalty for the use of certain patents held by the company. Official notice has been given to the company of the intended termination of this patent right agreement. The agreement has been in force for about five years and a-half, and the-notice now given will terminate 12 months hence. Two shillings out of the 30s fee paid by listeners in the Dominion is retained by the Post and Telegraph Department as its commission to cover the cost of collecting the fees. This leaves 25s out of every license fee for the use of the Broadcasting Board to provide various radio broadcasting services. In Australia the license fee is 24s per annum. The Australian Government has also had an agreement with the company whereby it receives 3s out of every license fee. About- three months ago the company was given notice by the Australian Government of its intended termination of the contract.

Early in the existence of the Radio Broadcasting Company of New Zealand the question of claims for patent royalties upon the plant used at its various stations was taken up by the Government, which intimated that it had assumed full responsibility, that the company was its agent, and that all claims would have' to be made against the Government direct. Some years later, in June, 1928, Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia), Ltd., which claimed ownership of a large number of wireless patents, including those of Marconi, made an agreement with the Commonwealth Government that if it could prove the validity of certain patents a royalty of 3s a year would be paid on every receiving set license in the Commonwealth. After winning a legal action in Melbourne, the company secured payment of the royalty. In December, 1928. the managing director visited New Zealand and held conferences with the Postmaster-general and departmental officers, as a result of which the bona fides of the company’s claim were admitted and the Government agreed to allot 3s from each annual broadcast receiving license fee as a royalty on the company’s patents. An arrangement was also made for a period extending to October, 1932, regarding royalties 6n apparatus used in the Government’s commercial wireless stations, on which no royalties had been paid since the establishment of the first of them some 20 years earlier. The Marconi Company’s claim for royalties on receiving sets made in Britain originally stood at 12s 6d a valveholder and was added to the selling price. A Patent Office tribunal in 1928 reduced it to 10 per cent, on the wholesale selling price of the set. The company had this decision upset in the courts, but in consequence of protests that the old rates would strangle an infant industry it agreed to a reduction. A claim for 12s 6d a valve-holder was made at one time in Australia, but as an outcome of a Royal Commission’s report it was decided that nothing should be paid for five years and that the validity of the patents should be decided.