No more could Okell, Cluer, Dicey, and Raikes escape competition than could the proprietors of other successful nostrums. In 1755 they went to court and won a suit for the infringement of their patent, but the damages amounted to only a shilling. Even after the patent expired, the tide of publicity flowed on.[7] [7] A broadside, issued in London, _ca._ 1750, advertising "Dr. Bateman's Drops," is preserved in the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, New York. Later reprints of this same broadside are preserved in the private collection of Samuel Aker, Albany, New York, and in the Smithsonian Institution. Competition was also lively in the 1740's among some half a dozen proprietors marketing a form of crude petroleum under the name of British Oil. Early in the decade Michael and Thomas Betton were granted a patent for "An Oyl extracted from a Flinty Rock for the Cure of Rheumatick and Scorbutick and other Cases." The source of the oil, according to their specifications, was rock lying just above the coal in mines, and this rock was pulverized and heated in a furnace to extract all the precious healing oil.[8] This Betton patent aroused one of their rivals, Edmund Darby & Co. of Coalbrook-Dale in Shropshire. Darby asserted that it was presumptuous of the Bettons to call their British oyl a new invention.[9] For over a century Darby and his predecessors had been marketing this self-same product, and it had proved to be "the one and only unrivall'd and most efficacious Remedy ever yet discovered, against the whole force of Diseases and Accidents that await Mankind...." For the Bettons to appropriate the process and patent it--and even to claim in their advertising cures which really had been wrought by the Darby product--was scandalous. Worse than that, said Darby, it was illegal, for in 1693 William III had granted a patent to "Martin Eele and two others at his Nomination for making the same Sort of Oyl from the same Sort of Materials." Evidence to substantiate his belief in the Betton perfidy was presented by Darby to George II, who had the matter duly investigated.[10] Being persuaded that Darby was right, the king and his councillors, in 1745, vacated the Betton patent. This victory seems not to have boomed the Darby interests, and this defeat seems not to have ruined the Bettons. During the succeeding century, the Betton patent was published and republished in advertising, just as if it had never fallen afoul the law. From their battles with the Oil from Coalbrook-Dale and other British Oils marketed by other proprietors, the Bettons emerged triumphant. In the years to come, patent or no, the Bettons British Oil was to dominate the field. [8] Michael and Thomas Betton, "Oil for the cure of rheumatic and scorbutic affections," British patent 587, August 14, 1742.