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12. Industrial Organisation.
The commercial agreements, within the electrical industry,
are confined to a few products and are restricted to national
limits. Only in two spheres is there an understanding and
organisation embracing the business throughout the world,
namely, for wireless telegraphy and incandescent lamps. In
view of the importance of both agreements, and their value
as models, their development and scope are fully described
below.
A. Agreement Relating to Wireless Tele-
graphy.
The patent dispute between Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph
Company in London and the Telefunken Gesellschaft in Berlin
terminated in 1912 in an arrangement which provided for
mutual interchange of patents throughout the world on an
absolutely equal basis.
This agreement ceased to operate with the outbreak of
war. But only a year after the end of the war, the parties to
this agreement had met again. The agreement was then ex-
tended, in as much as the Telefunken Gesellschaft’ was in-
cluded in the Société Anonyme Internationale de Télégraphie
sans Fil (S. A. I. T.), which organises and controls the operation
of wireless installations on all vessels of the European Mer-
cantile Marine, with the exception of those countries in which
national shipping wireless companies already existed, such as
England, Germany and France. At the same time the French
Company, which had in the meantime become independent,
joined the new international Company, so that from this
moment all questions relating to marine traffic could be dealt
with uniformly. Very shortly afterwards the French Company
agreed to a mutual exchange of patent rights between Germany
and France, and this example was followed by the Radio Cor-
poration of America. By 1921 affairs between the four world
firms had been so far regulated, that each of the companies
had the right to use the patents of the other companies, each