Navy Sues To Guard Torpedo Secrets.

New York Times 100 years ago today, June 26, 1913:
Court Asked to Restrain Bliss Company from Telling England How We Handle Missiles.
    Assistant United States Attorney General Malcolm A. Coles asked Judge Veeder in the United States District Court in Brooklyn yesterday to  "protect the right arm of the nation’s defense — the navy," by granting the request of the Government for a preliminary injunction to restrain the E. W. Bliss Company from revealing to the British Government the secrets of the torpedoes manufactured by that concern and used in our navy. Decision was reserved.
    The Government contended that if the court refused to grant the injunction the Bliss Company would be enabled to sell the torpedoes to foreign countries. The company has patents on the torpedoes it manufactures in its own name in Japan, France, and England, but owing to a stipulation in the company’s contracts with the Government, which binds the concern to secrecy in regard to the operation of the torpedoes, none of them has been sold abroad.
    The Bliss Company, which is a West Virginia corporation, owns a large plant at the foot of Plymouth Street in Brooklyn, where it manufactures torpedoes for our navy. The contracts with the Government were made in 1905 and 1912. On May 9 the company notified Secretary of the Navy Daniels by letter that after June 1 it proposed to demonstrate the complete operation and construction of the Bliss-Leavitt torpedo to Whitehead & Co. of England.
    Under instructions from the Navy Department, transmitted by Attorney General McReynolds, Mr. Youngs was directed to begin an action to restrain the Bliss Company from doing what they proposed to do.
    In his application for the injunction Mr. Youngs alleges that the secrets the defendants proposed to reveal consisted of "information of a confidential character that cannot be made public without detriment to the Government." The complaint alleges that since the Bliss Company has been making torpedoes for the Government improvements which have been patented have been made in the missiles. Pending argument on the motion for a preliminary injunction Judge Veeder issued a restraining order against the Bliss Company preventing it from disclosing information concerning the torpedoes.
   "This torpedo is the principal weapon of our national defense," said Assistant United States Attorney General Coles yesterday. "The right arm of the nation's defense — the navy — calls upon this court to protect its rights. The defendants contend that the precise point in this case is the balanced turbine and its intended disclosure. This is not so. The company's letter to the Navy Department reads that the Bliss Company intends to disclose the 'complete construction and operation' of the Bliss-Leavitt torpedo. If this is done, Japan or any other country can obtain these torpedoes in the open market, an act which would work irreparable injury to the United States that could not be estimated in dollars."
    In opposing the Government's application, Arthur C. Fraser, counsel for the Bliss Company, asserted that the only public right the Government held over the torpedo was its share in the invention of the balanced turbine. Against the Government’s contentions that Lieut. G. C. Davison patented this invention, the attorney for the defense held that F. M. Leavitt, chief engineer of the Bliss Company, had perfected the balanced turbine patented by Mr. Davison. Mr. Fraser asserted that Mr. Davison patented his idea, which was improved by Mr. Leavitt, and then assigned his patent rights to the Government. It was some time later, according to the lawyer, that the Bliss Company purchased from Mr. Davison his foreign rights and filed its patents covering the improved devices in Japan, France, and England.
    "If the Government wanted secrecy about this balanced turbine," Mr. Fraser said, "why did it patent it through Davison, thereby disclosing its operations to the whole world? The very thing they set up in their complaint and ask us to keep secret is no secret at all. We gave the Government an opportunity to purchase the universal rights to the Bliss-Leavitt torpedo, and it did not take it. This torpedo has put the United States in a peculiarly advantageous condition. The Government ought to buy it and keep it for the exclusive use of its navy."
    Mr. Coles, replying to the statements of the attorney for the Bliss Company, said:
   "The Government has put up $1, 500, 000 to help the company perfect this invention, and has paid into the company's treasury more than $6,000,000 besides on contracts, practically keeping the company alive."