Robert H. Goddard - Patent Settlement

Patent Settlement

The Guggenheim Foundation and Goddard's estate filed suit in 1951 against the U.S. government for prior infringement of Goddard's patents. In 1960, the parties settled the suit, and the U.S. armed forces and NASA paid out an award of $1 million (half went to his wife), at that time the highest government settlement ever paid in a patent case.

The settlement amount exceeded the total of all the funding for Goddard's work throughout his entire career.

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