Monopoly on Paper?

GOVERNMENT

The Federal Trade Commission, which usually aims an antimonopoly broadside at an entire industry, last week drew a careful bead on just one man. Its target: lean, fast-talking Henry J. Taylor, 47, sometime businessman, author (Men and Power, Time Runs Out), radio commentator and onetime Scripps-Howard journalist. In a cease & desist order growing out of a three-year investigation, FTC charged that Taylor, doing business as Manhattan's Package Advertising Co., had created a monopoly in unpatented waxed-paper wrappers by licensing others, setting prices and dividing territories. Through it, said FTC, Taylor had collected $1,300,000 in royalties from 1931 to 1945 from some 30 manufacturers who thought that he held essential patents.

Actually, Taylor owned two patents covering certain methods of using advertising matter on waxed-paper bands, said FTC, but "none of the licensees . . . have ever used [Taylor's] methods." In short, the manufacturers who paid royalties to Taylor "were unfamiliar with the nature of the patents."

Snapped Henry Taylor: "The implication by FTC that we ever did anything contrary to the public interest is not true."

He did not deny that he had collected the royalties, but claimed that FTC's order last week to stop the practices was "entirely academic," since the licensing agreements and the patents had expired last March. FTC, aware of the lapse in patents, said that it had issued its order anyway just to be sure that Taylor would not start up his system again.

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