Some of Goldin's legal tactics resulted in problems even though they were technically successful. One such was his patenting of "Sawing a woman in half". He applied for a patent in September 1921 and was awarded U.S. patent number 1,458,575 on 12 June 1923. This gave him legal right to an exclusive monopoly on his invention for 17 years and thus made it easier for him to prevent other magicians from using his methods. However patents require inventors to reveal the workings of their inventions, which meant Goldin could no longer keep his methods completely secret. In the 1930s this brought Goldin into confrontation with the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the maker of Camel cigarettes, which was running an advertising campaign aimed at debunking the publicity for a competing brand. Reynolds used the slogan "It's fun to be fooled...It's more fun to know" and ran adverts showing the secrets behind famous mysteries. In 1933 they produced one with a picture showing the workings of a version of "sawing a woman in half". Goldin sued but the case was eventually dismissed by a federal court in 1938. After that Goldin gave up on litigation over the sawing illusion and focused instead on secrecy. For example, he never patented his later sawing illusion in which a giant buzzsaw blade appears to cut through an assistant.