Eventually, the antitrust lawyers in the Justice Department worked out an intriguing compromise, settled officially in 1956. AT&T would be allowed to maintain its monopoly over phone service, but any patented invention that had originated in Bell Labs would have to be freely licensed to any American company that found it useful, and all new patents would have to be licensed for a modest fee. Effectively, the government said to AT&T that it could keep its profits, but it would have to give away its ideas in return. It was a unique arrangement, one we are not likely to see again. The monopoly
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