William Pollard and the Arkwright Patents

A ngered by the ill treatment he felt he had received from Parliament at trials of his suits for alleged infringement of his I775 cotton machinery patent, Richard Arkwright told fellow manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood in I785 that he intended to take revenge on an ungrateful Britain. Parliament had invalidated his patent rights to the extraordinarily productive cotton-spinning machinery which he had introduced ten years earlier; he would now invalidate England's jealously guarded monopoly of the whole technology, including both his I769 and I775 patents. He would, he said, publish descriptions and copper plates of all the parts, that it might be known to foreign nations as well as our own.' And six years later, on December 30, I79I, a United States patent was granted to William Pollard of Philadelphia, ass[ignee] of Richard Arkwright, for a machine for Spinning and Roving Cotton that included components of both of Arkwright's

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