"Perfect Example"?

If he had been Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (see above), he would have retired into hurt silence. If he had been almost any big U.S. manufacturer under fire, he would have been a bit shy. But he was William Dzus, a Ukrainian toolmaker who was accused of holding up the war effort of the country of his adoption.

The accusation was made last fortnight by Thurman Arnold, to the Senate Patents Committee. Mr. Dzus, said Mr. Arnold, had invented a unique self-locking screw that fastens the cowling on a plane's nose to the fuselage. He couldn't produce enough, and he wouldn't license anyone else. Ergo: U.S. bombers and fighters waited while Dzus failed to deliver. Said Thurman Arnold: "A perfect example of a patent . . . acting to block entire assembly lines."

Last week William Dzus went to Washington to tell his side of the story. Said he (with documents to prove it): 1) his product was not unique, but one of three or four similar fasteners, all of them approved by the Army & Navy; 2) the Navy refused him a certificate of necessity for plant expansion on those very grounds; 3) 0PM would not help him expand either.

When Toolmaker Dzus invented his screw, his employer offered him $100 a year for it. Instead Dzus took his patent and went into business for himself. That, he figured, was what patent laws are for. By the time the Senators had heard him through, Thurman Arnold's unterrified "perfect example" had proved just about the opposite of what Mr. Arnold intended.

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