The U.S. military and other elements of the U.S. federal government pressured the Wright Company, the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, and other manufacturers to form the association to break a patent logjam that was preventing U.S. manufacturers from making airplanes that the U.S. military could use in World War I.
Legally, the MAA was a private corporation which had an agreement with the airplane manufacturers to cross-license their patents without substantial royalties.
The U.S. government, as a result of a recommendation from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, formed by then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, pressured the industry to form a cross-licensing organization, the MAA, in 1917.
[5] The association was designed as a patent pool which drew up a cross-licensing agreement to allow manufacturers to have unrestrained use of airplane patents in order to produce airplanes for the government's war effort.
Frank Henry Russell participated in the MAA's formation and was elected its president, which he remained until his death in 1947.