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Phillip Anderson aptly compares the Lehigh Valley during this period to Silicon Valley. Critical innovations occurred there. The enormous increase in output accompanied by falling prices and increased quantity and quality foreshadowed similar patterns in consumer goods from automobiles to computers. In addition, fierce disputes developed over intellectual property rights. And employees left firms to start up new firms nearby which are bought up by outside investors and then move on again.
The fiercest dispute over intellectual property occurred over the Hurry-Seaman patent. Other firms in the Lehigh Valley and beyond naturally attempted to invent around it. The Atlas Portland Cement Co. naturally attempted to enforce their intellectual property rights. Just before a court case against one of the other Lehigh Valley companies, Alpha Portland Cement Co., was to begin, they settled out of court by forming a holding company to administer and license the patents. Other companies further afield, such as the Sandusky Cement Company, did not join the holding company and were sued. Finally, in 1912 after "two thousand pages of record and six hundred of argument" Judge Baker ruled in "Atlas Portland Cement Co. et al v. Sandusky Portland Cement Co." that the patent could not be enforced as the principle was general and familiar enough for others to invent themselves.
The Alpha Portland Cement Co. is a particularly good example of a firm with multiple connections to many of the leading firms that developed in the Lehigh Valley. Though there are different accounts of their exact roles, it is clear the two founders of the plant at Alpha NJ were Amable Bonneville and Thomas Whittaker. Amable Bonneville had previously been connected with Portland and natural cement plants at Coplay and Siegfried and the Atlas Portland Cement Co. After starting the Whittaker Portland Cement Co., he moved on to assist the development of Vulcanite Portland Cement Co., also in Warren County, and the Bonneville Portland Cement Co. at Siegfried, before his death in 1895. Thomas Whittaker continued with his cement company until 1895 when he sold it to the new Alpha Portland Cement Co. headed by George Bartol from Philadelphia. While Thomas Whittaker died soon after this, his widow, Catherine Whittaker, co-investor, George Ormrod, and Plant Manager, Charles Matcham, joined General Harry Trexler, one of Allentown's leading businessmen, to start the Lehigh Portland Cement Company. The Alpha Portland Cement Company was then sold again to investors from Pittsburg. Bartol moved to Nazareth to form, with William Schaffer, the Dexter Portland Cement Company. Schaeffer had previously been connected with the first plant at Nazareth, the Nazareth Cement Company, and would go on to start a third company at Nazareth, the Phoenix Portland Cement Company. Meanwhile the Alpha Portland Cement Company bought out a struggling Portland cement company nearby at Martins Creek. The president of this company, George Roydhouse went on to develop the Bath Portland Cement Company at Bath, PA, (which was bought out by the Lehigh Portland Cement Co. in 1925) with Fred B. Franks, who went on to be involved with the last new plants in the Lehigh Valley: the Keystone Portland Cement Co. at Bath in 1928 and the National Portland Cement Co. at Brodhead in 1935.
