Dennis v. Commissioner

57 T.C. No. 35, 57 T.C. 352, 1971 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 11
CourtUnited States Tax Court
DecidedDecember 13, 1971
DocketDocket No. 772-70
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 57 T.C. No. 35 (Dennis v. Commissioner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Tax Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Dennis v. Commissioner, 57 T.C. No. 35, 57 T.C. 352, 1971 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 11 (tax 1971).

Opinion

Scott, Judge:

Respondent determined deficiencies in petitioners’ income tases for the calendar years 1955 through 1962 in the following amounts:

Year Deficiency
1955 ___$37,436. 32
1956 _ 22,175.34
1957 _ 39,158.53
1958 _ 26,855.66
Year Deficiency
1959 _$21,163. 87
1960 _ 21,305.38
1961___ 2, 677. 28
1962 _ 301.60

Petitioners in their petition claimed overpayments for each of the years 1955 through 1960 based on an alternative position which they appear to have abandoned.

The only issue for decision is whether the amounts received in the years here in issue by petitioners as payments on an unregistered promissory note which did not have interest coupons attached issued on October 1, 1953, to one of petitioners by a corporation on its organization in exchange for 'all his rights to an undivided interest in patents and patent applications are taxable as ordinary income.

FINDINGS OF FACT

Some of the facts have been stipulated and are found accordingly.

Petitioners, husband and wife, resided at Macon, Ga., at the time of the filing of the petition in this case. They filed their joint Federal income tax returns for the calendar years 1955 through 1962 with the district director of internal revenue at Atlanta, Ga.

In 1939, Clement O. Dennis, hereinafter referred to as petitioner, formed a partnership with A. L. Jarvis and entered the tire-recapping business in Macon, Ga. The partnership was primarily in the business of recapping tires under a Government contract, but later it expanded to include operation of a service station. This venture, known as the Dennis-Jarvis Tire Co. operated until 1944.

The tire-recapping equipment of the Dennis-Jarvis Tire Co. was steam operated, molding the tires by applying heat in the recapping process. In 1943 petitioner became acquainted with a retired engineer, J. W. Napier, who had, several years earlier, invented two electric tire-recapping devices. Napier had filed for letters patent for his inventions in 1942, the serial numbers being 427,423 and 463,726. Napier’s inventions lacked certain features which would affect their usefulness; nevertheless, petitioner was convinced that, if improved, an electrically operated recapping mold would work.

Napier and petitioner in April 1943 discussed the granting by Napier to petitioner of exclusive rights and license to manufacture, use, and sell electric recapping molds of the design specified in the aforementioned patent applications. The sole territorial exclusion of this license was to be a 10-State area in the South which had previously been licensed to the MacMillan Electric Mold & Rubber Co. An agreement to this effect stated to be entered into on April 15,1943, was reduced to writing but was signed only by Napier.

On January 31, 1944, by written contract, petitioner was given an exclusive right for a period of 90 days thereafter to an assignment of any of Napier’s rights in the electric mold inventions, serial numbers 427,423 and 463,726. Petitioner agreed that if he obtained the assignment he would, with reasonable promptness, begin manufacturing the recapping equipment and pay 15 percent of the net profits to Napier.

Within the specified 90 days, - petitioner advised Napier that he would enter the business of manufacturing tire-recapping apparatus. Petitioner and A. L. Jarvis formed another partnership in May 1944 known as the Den-Nap Electric Mold Co. and began the manufacture of molds for the recapping of automobile tires. Petitioner and Jarvis were equal partners in this venture. On May 1, 1944, petitioner and Jarvis contracted to purchase some land to build a plant and subsequently acquired the land on August 16,1944. Prior to acquiring title to the land, construction of the plant was begun.

Napier, at the suggestion of petitioner, had been working all during this time at refining and improving his electric molds. On May 12, 1944, petitioner and Napier called on a firm of patent attorneys in Washington, D.C., to discuss the filing of further patent applications. On September 6, 1944, Napier made formal application for a patent for his separate section abutment ring mold component for tire-recapping apparatus bearing serial number 532,909. The patent application had previously been assigned by Napier to petitioner by written assignment dated August 29, 1944. Letters Patent No. 2,398,151 were issued on April 9, 1946, for this device, in the name of petitioner as assignee of Napier.

On April 15, 1945, Napier made formal application for a patent for a tire-recapping apparatus, bearing serial number 586,684. The patent application had previously been assigned by Napier to petitioner on March 27,1945. On December 5, 1946, a continuation application for patent bearing serial number 789,989 for the same invention in substitution for application serial number 586,684 was filed. Letters Patent No. 2,475,579 were issued on this application on July 5, 1949, in the name of petitioner as assignee of Napier.

Den-Nap Electric Mold Co. entered into a written agreement with Napier on August 11,1944, whereby Napier agreed to provide certain engineering advisory services to the partnership for a salary plus 20 percent of the net profits of the partnership. Den-Nap proposed to manufacture and sell or lease electric recapping molds in accordance with patterns prepared and to be prepared by Napier, within 60 days after August 11, 1944. In the event of Napier’s death or incapacity, his salary would cease but the percentage of profits would be increased to 25 percent and would be paid to Napier, his heirs and assigns, so long as the Den-Nap partnership or his successors, continued in business and used the molds designed by Napier. Napier also assigned to Den-Nap Electric Mold Co. by the same instrument, all of his existing inventions and applications for patents relative to the manufacture and use of electric molds in the recapping of tires subject to existing assignments.

Napier died in 1949 and in 1951 a settlement on the employment agreement was effected with his widow by petitioner. She released all claims she might have to U.S. Letters Patent Nos. 2,398,151 and 2,475,579 and any rights arising under the agreement between Den-Nap Electric Mold Co. and her late husband in exchange for the sum of $10,000.

Den-Nap, the partnership, began the manufacture of tire-recapping equipment in the summer of 1944, prior to the closing of the purchase of the plant site. Although a model of the tire-recapping apparatus incorporating Napier’s earlier inventions (bearing serial numbers 427,423 and 463,726) had been shown to petitioner by Napier in 1943 when they first became acquainted, the first model of the improved electric mold recapping apparatus was not built and tested by the Den-Nap partnership until the early or middle part of July 1944.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
57 T.C. No. 35, 57 T.C. 352, 1971 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 11, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/dennis-v-commissioner-tax-1971.