Tesla Sues Marconi for Wireless Control

Nikola Tesla has appealed to the law to declare that he and not William Marconi is the inventor of wireless telegraphy. Many millions in money and world-wide control of the commercial use of the wireless transmission of energy are involved in the struggle.

The suit has been brought in the United States District Court in the name of the Nikola Tesla Co., of which the Serbian inventor is the president, and to which he has transferred all of his fundamental patent rights in wireless telegraphy. The defendant in the action is the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America.

Mr. Tesla announced recently in connection with the suit that he has just been granted a patent by the United States Government which will supersede and revolutionize all present forms and applications of wireless telegraphy and will enable him and the financiers who are associated with him to obtain and keep a hold on commercial wireless telegraphy, no matter what may be the outcome of the litigation he has begun against the Marconi interests.

"My earlier experiments in Colorado in 1899." he said, "demonstrated that I was on the right track, and with a transmitter of my invention of not more than 30 inches in diameter I succeeded in concentrating and applying an amount of electrical energy concentrated and controlled. I can telephone by wireless across the ocean, I can use the apparatus, also, for sending a blaze of light over great distances."

Mr. Tesla in the complaint alleges that he is the inventor of a system of transmission of electrical energy and of apparatus arranged for that method and system, for which he received a patent, numbered 645,576, applied for on Sept. 2, 1897, and issued March 20, 1900, and for which he also received a patent, numbered 649,621, applied for at the same time as the other, and issued by the commissioner on May 15, 1900.

Marconi's application for a patent on wireless telegraphy, the complaint asserts, was filed on Nov. 10, 1900, and was not granted and issued until June 28, 1904, being numbered 763,772.

The Tesla company asks the court to declare the Marconi wireless telegraph patent null and void, claiming that the Marconi patent covers the inventions and combinations of apparatus described and claimed in the Tesla patents.

The Marconi company has put in an answer denying any infringement.

The Tesla company also has begun a suit against the Marconi company for alleged infringement of the Tesla patents.

[Ed. Note. — Tesla's patents and wireless transmission of energy are covered in "Wireless Telegraphy" by Sewall, procurable from our Book Department at $2 15 prepaid.]