Radio age (Jan-Dec 1925)

RADIO AGE for January, 1925 The Magazine of the Hour Right Here's Where We Call the Bluff of a $33,000,000 Radio Crowd RADIO Corporation of America has gone into the United States Patent Office and filed formal objection to registration of the title, RADIO AGE, which title has been used and owned by the publishers of this magazine since the spring of 1922. The Radio Corporation, with fine insight into delicate legal and business discriminations, alleges that the title, RADIO AGE, is an infringement on the title of "WIRELESS AGE," a publication which Radio Corporation controls. This initial step toward trying to grab the name of RADIO AGE and give the name to its own organ was preceded by threats made to the publishers of this magazine. We were warned that if we did not surrender the name of our magazine, a name in which we have generously invested labor and money, Radio Corporation would turn loose its legal department on us. That means a threat of bringing us into federal court. On the side of Radio Corporation would be almost unlimited millions, tremendous influence in quarters where "pull" is most useful, and an absolutely false presumption of law and facts. Radio Corporation knows, and its legal department knows, that it has no shadow of a right to act on such a violent hypothesis that RADIO AGE as a name infringes on "Wireless Age." Lawyers know it; the publishers of RADIO AGE know it, and before we have finished the radio public is going to know it. If we were in the position before the American people that Radio Corporation occupies, we would not have taken this action in the Patent Office. If we had been the Radio Corporation, we would not have sent our agents to Washington to try to wrest away a magazine title from its rightful owners, but we would have sent them to Washington to meet the charges that have been filed there by the Federal Trade Commission, a bureau of the United States government. We would have been devoting all of our effort and our appropriation for legal talent to the effort of disproving the charge that we were a trust and that we were restraining competition, thus working a hardship upon twenty millions of radio fans. We do not know whether or not a radio trust exists, but if there is such a lawless combination in restraint of radio commerce, the fans who are spending $350,000,000 for radio merchandise this year should, and probably will, find a way to express their opinion of it. Or, if we had been Radio Corporation, instead of reaching out into the Middle West to strong-arm a magazine that has been persistent and vigorous in upbuilding interest in radio, we would have sent our agents to Richmond Hill, N. Y. We would have looked up Al Grebe out there at his big new broadcasting station and we would have told Al that we were heartily ashamed that the Radio Corporation had brought a suit against him; a suit so devoid of legal justification that it was thrown out of court before proceedings were fairly started. Or if we had been in Radio Corporation's place, we would have called together sixty independent radio manufacturers of the United States and would have given those independent manufacturers an explana tion of Radio Corporation's great good fortune in having through one of its subsidiary companies, been privileged to manufacture receiving sets under license granted by the government while the sixty independent manufacturers could not obtain a similar privilege. We would have explained to the sixty independent manufacturers and to the American public how it happened that it required eighteen months for the independent manufacturers to obtain a ruling that they were entitled to the same advantages from the confiscated German patents as was Radio Corporation. We would have sent our agents down to Elgin, Illinois, and told Charlie Erbstein that he could have the broadcasting equipment he publicly declares the "Four Horsemen" refuse to sell him because he is against radio monopoly, either in manufacturing, selling or broadcasting. RADIO AGE is against monopoly also. With deepest respect for the law and with profound faith in the fairness of the people's verdict in any issue where the public is fully informed of the facts, we are going to do our best to maintain what the constitution guaranteed us — a free press. It is a worthy saying that truth in promotion implies honesty in manufacture. It is obvious that a corporation that is hopeful of building up good will for itself and its product by threatening continuously to turn loose its high-priced lawyers on manufacturer, dealer, editor and publisher, is afflicted with aggravated optimism. It is possible that Radio Corporation may be successful in making off with the name of this magazine. Even so, it would not be a vital blow. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. It is possible that almost a quarter of a million readers would still read this magazine if it were called RADIO — Something else. And we are not so sure that manufacturers of radio equipment would not still favor us with their advertising. We even harbor the thought that we might have more readers and more advertising after the facts become known. Readers and advertisers are like that sometimes. The Owner-Editor of RADIO AGE was a newspaper correspondent at the front with the American Army in France. He was the first American to reach Berlin after the Armistice was signed. He was in the midst of the Chinese rebellion in 1920. He later described the anti-American outbreak on the Yangtse and he was in Siberia watching Kolchak make the last stand against the Bolsheviks. He assisted two other Americans in the rescue of Dr. A. L. Shelton, Christian Missionary, kidnapped for ransom by Yunnan bandits and held captive for two months near the Tibet border. He has been a newspaper editor and foreign correspondent for a quarter of a century. He thrives on action. He knows newspaper editors all the way from the Maine border, where they smuggle rum, to the California border, where they smuggle Orientals. He is going to organize a proof press and let every newspaper in the United States know what transpires in this Radio Corporation matter. And maybe we can induce Charlie Erbstein to broadcast it. Let's go!