TRIAL ON PATENT RESPIRATOR SUIT SCHEDULED TODAY

The case of Warren E. Collins, Inc., versus J. H. Emerson Co., will begin this morning in the Federal District Court of Boston, as the culmination of a two-year battle between Phillip Drinker, assistant professor of Industrial Hygiene at the School of Public Health, and John H. Emerson, a Cambridge inventor. It is expected that the case will take three days to decide.

Several years ago Drinker developed a respirator in the University laboratories at the request of the New York Consolidated Gas Company and sold the patent rights to it to the Collins Company, which in return paid Drinker a royalty of between two and three hundred dollars on each machine. Emerson found it was possible to build machines using somewhat the same principle and allegedly more efficient at a price of several hundred dollars less than the Collins Company. Suit was then brought against Emerson for patent infringements but action has been postponed sevveral times.

The University recognized that the public was not benefiting from the Drinker machine to as great an extent as desired because the price was prohibitive and to prevent similar situations from arising passed rules forbidding the patenting of any invention that may affect the health of individuals or the public unless the patent be taken in the name of the University. It is on these ethical grounds and also on the existence of similar machines since 1876 that Emerson will base his defense.

Emerson is a Cambridge inventor who manufactures much of the University scientific apparatus, especially that used in the physiology department, and perfected the cheaper respirator during the infantile paralysis epidemic of 1931.