No, the Wright brothers' patents did not hold up the US aviation industry: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673 http://papers.ssrn.com/so

No, the Wright brothers' patents did not hold up the US aviation industry: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673 Although the introduction reads something like a conspiracy theory, this paper does a decent job of providing historical industrial data and references as evidence that despite the various patents at play, the aviation industry in the years leading up to and during WW1 was actually doing well.