The machine had not been patented, for reasons that most successful inventors will readily understand. While a patent is supposed to protect the inventor, it does not do so in many instances; on the contrary, it frequently gives a rival just the information he needs to duplicate the device with technical variations that will at least make the question of infringement a difficult one to decide. The inventor of limited means, opposed by a company with almost unlimited capital, is at a serious disadvantage when he gets into the courts, and there are cases where the value of an invention has been largely destroyed by having the market flooded with the article before the legal rights can be definitely determined. There is hardly a single patented device of great value that has not been the basis of long and costly litigation, involving either the unauthorized use or manufacture of the device as it is or the use or manufacture of a device suggested by the original and differing from it only enough to give technical plausibility to the plea that it is not an infringement. Even the great Edison is reported to have said that he has made practically no money on his patents, but has had to enter the manufacturing business to get any material benefit from his inventions. “When you patent an invention,” the Kalins had been informed by a man of experience in such matters, “you are furnishing ammunition to the enemy. You are giving him your secret, and he will put some smart men at work to discover some method of using it himself. Edison is still busy with inventions, but you don’t see his name in the patent reports any more. He has become too wise for that. Secrecy is the best protection, provided you have something that can be kept secret.” All this Jonas Kalin reviewed as he walked slowly and with bowed head toward his club. They had kept their invention secret, they had advertised extensively, and now, just as they were beginning to get returns on their investment, the dream was shattered. They had tried to interest various capitalists, but capitalists could not see the future as they saw it. Capital is exceptionally conservative when there is a question of investing in inventions that it does not understand, for inventors are proverbially optimistic and not infrequently cost capital a good deal of money. “Thirty thousand dollars of life insurance!” muttered Jonas, as he settled himself in a corner of the reading-room. “If we could have the use of that money for a year we would be all right.”