Abstract
IN Congregation at Oxford on February 1 the Vice-Chancellor announced that the claim of the company which has been suing the University for £750,000, following the conviction of B. J. Owen, formerly director of the Institute for Research in Agricultural Engineering, had been settled by a payment by the University of £70,000. This ends satisfactorily, it may be said, a trouble that has been threatening the University off and on during the past seven years. It began in 1926, when the director of the Institute for Research in Agricultural Engineering sold to the plaintiff company patents relating to the extraction of sugar from beet which were stated to be novel and excellent but which proved to be worthless. The company believed that the director was acting throughout as agent of the University and that the representations he made in that capacity resulted in the loss by the company of much of its capital. The necessity for this large payment is, of course, a serious blow to the University, but the money required will not be diverted from any of the funds for which appeals have been made in recent months.
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£750,000 Claim against the University of Oxford. Nature 141, 238 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141238a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141238a0