Much like TCP/IP, HTTP and a plethora of other internet standards; it would have not been adopted had anyone maintained an active claim of ownership.
The way to make money off a standard is to sell it's complements ( think Cisco or SUN selling equipment that works with TCP/IP and ethernet ) not to attempt to charge for use of the standard.
"The way to make money off a standard is to sell it's complements"
That seems to be how things went. Tantlinger created over 70 patents related to transportation in his lifetime. Sea-Land, his employer, sold containerized shipping services.
I doubt there were any regrets about dropping the patent. Malcom McLean, owner of Sea-Land, did pretty well for himself:
[R.J.] Reynolds agreed in January 1969 to buy Sea-Land for $530 million in cash and stock. McLean made $160 million personally and got a seat on the company’s board.
If I remember right, he hated serving on the board, left to found a rival container-shipping company, and ran it into the ground. (Not to knock Malcom McLean! But I think it makes the story even more interesting.)
Sort of the inverse of "genius is a rising market", it wasn't that he "ran it into the ground", he made a bad bet, but one completely in keeping with the '70s "Limits to Growth" Zeitgeist (more like "no limits to government", especially stupidity in energy policy). From his Wikipedia page, and of course there's more detail in The Box:
"In 1978, McLean purchased United States Lines. There, he built a fleet of 4,400-TEU container ships that were the largest afloat at the time. The ships, operating in round-the-world service, were designed in the aftermath of the 1970s oil shortages and were fuel-efficient but slow, and therefore not well-adapted to compete in the subsequent period of cheap oil. USL went bankrupt in 1987. McLean took very personally the criticism directed against him after the collapse of USL and the resulting loss of many jobs associated with and dependent on USL."
