Patent Medicine

Bottle up the Japanese?

In their struggle against foreign imports, which captured a record 29.2% of U.S. auto sales last month, American carmakers have an unlikely ally. He is Walter Avrea, 56, a Tempe, Ariz., inventor who is waging his own war with Japan's manufacturers.

The crusty Avrea, who frets that inventors are treated as "second-class citizens," holds a 1970 patent for a "coolant recovery system" that includes a small plastic bottle attached to the radiator by tubing. Before Avrea's invention, hot radiators sometimes spilled frothy fluid onto the road through a pressure-relief valve, lowering efficiency and forcing drivers to check the coolant level. Now, that fluid flows into Avrea's container; when the engine cools, the liquid runs back through the tubing into the radiator.

During the three years it took Avrea to get a patent, his invention was pirated by auto companies and suppliers. Fighting back in the courts, he has won more than $5 million in settlements and awards from General Motors, Ford and three auto-parts manufacturers. Then, last March, he was hit with a suit by Toyota, Japan's largest carmaker, that sought to invalidate his troublesome patent. Says he: "It was like a second Pearl Harbor."

Avrea countered by suing 25 companies, including Japan's major automakers, for a total of $62.9 million in damages for patent infringement. If the Japanese do not settle the matter within the next six weeks, Avrea plans to ask the U.S. International Trade Commission to halt imports of Japanese cars. Under the Trade Act of 1974, the I.T.C. would at least have to investigate Avrea's complaint. Neither Ford nor GM will comment on Avrea's campaign, but nothing would bolster Detroit's spirits more than watching the plucky inventor devise a way to block those popular imports.

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