A prolonged court battle with Henry Ford had forced the building of this car in an effort to prove the validity of the patent. This delay in producing a barely operable vehicle was one of two factors that weighed against the Selden patent when it ultimately failed to hold up in court. The other factor-the more damaging of the two-was its description of the engine, which proved to be specifically different from those in use by the other manufacturers of the day.
The control of an industry through patent law was nothing new when Selden filed for his patent. Earlier, the Pope Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, had acquired patents on the bicycle, and exacted a $10 royalty on all bicycles manufactured by others in the United States. Pope was the single largest manufacturer in the U.S., producing their Columbia bicycle. But a sizable portion of the company's considerable fortune was made as a direct result of the patent rights and the consequential royalties. The early 1890's presented the largest boom in bicycle sales the country had ever seen. The Pope company had prepared for this by acquiring the requisite patents to exact royalties from the entire industry.
Similarly, Isaac Rice, through his Electric Storage Battery Company of Philadelphia, had acquired Charles Brush's patent on lead storage batteries. In 1897 Rice purchased the fledgling Electric Carriage and Wagon Company with the desire to both make automobiles and profit from the manufacture of electric cars made by others. The company was reincorporated as the Electric Vehicle Company.
Isaac Rice produced electric taxicabs for New York City, and attracted the financial backing of some large corporate interests. This group of financiers, led by William C. Whitney, bought out Rice, acquiring the patent to control the market for electric vehicles. But the aggressive optimism of this financial combine was too extensive for the limited production capabilities of the Electric Vehicle Company, as the ambitious plan called for the simultaneous launching of electric taxicabs in several major U.S. cities. They turned for help to an established manufacturer that had been making both electric and gas-powered automobiles for almost three years, since 1895. They turned to none other than the Pope Manufacturing Company, which had shifted some of its emphasis from bicycles to the automobile.
The Pope brothers turned out to be rather easy to convince. Here, financially secure in the knowledge of their own success with the bicycle patents, it was too much for the Popes to resist tying in with the New York conglomerate, which just happened to possess the patent on lead storage batteries.
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