Warning to Infringers of The Tesla Patents

The company which controls the patents granted to Mr. Nikola Tesla evidently is planning to make it warm for infringers. In a circular recently sent out to persons and corporations deemed to need the warning, they say: "In view of the great prominence given to the multiphase motors covered by the patents of Mr. Nikola Tesla, we think it right to direct your attention to the fact that this company claims the exclusive right to manufacture and sell all forms of single-phase motors where a second phase is induced so as to make the same a two-phase induction motor, notably the form used for the operation of fans." The advice is also given to those who are using motors of the kind named to avoid permanent injunction by arranging with the company betimes, as a decision in important suits now pending is expected early in 1896, and all indications point to a decision in favor of the owners of the Tesla patents.

Progressive Age (Oct. 11), which gives these facts with editorial comments, while regarding much of the circular as "pure advertising," to be "taken with the large modicum of salt needed by the statement of a corporation with millions at stake and whose fate is still in the hands of the courts, undecided," yet feels it a duty to present the facts on the side of the company.

"It is undoubtedly true that electrical apparatus depending upon alternating currents of two or more phases will play an important part in the electrical industry of the near future. It is still more certain that a decision of the suits in question will throw a tremendous amount of existing apparatus out of legitimate use, and a corresponding amount of new business into the hands of the victor; while rumor has it that all the points of equity, if not of law, are on the side of the aggressive corporation. So that, whichever way the proceeding turns, — and we do not presume to undertake prophecy, or legal analysis of the question, — there will be a large volume of property affected, outside of that owned by the two principal combatants."

The guarantees to purchasers under which a large number of this class of motors have been sold our contemporary regards as worthless, in case the favorable decision expected by the company shall be obtained. "The intentions of the insuring party may have been of the best, but it is now clear that the liabilities which he has thus gradually accumulated are such as will fall, if at all, in a lump, and, when they fall, are certain not only to swamp, but to leave by far the greater portion of the insured without protection or protector. The questions therefore arise: Are these parties, so plainly damaged in equity, to have no recourse in law? And if so, to whom?"

It appears to us that there is no recourse. In such cases one would wish that purchasers could be protected, if possible; but we can see no way whereby a person, having accepted an insufficient security and relied upon it as a sole remedy, can be re-secured; and the editorial reviewed admits the extreme difficulty of the case. "Clearly the purchasers should be protected. But by whom? It is plainly not the duty of the successful litigant, who has been merely defending his rights. It is as plainly beyond the powers of the vanquished party. So the question is not a simple one. But it would certainly seem that, if the State cannot guarantee the validity of its patents, before it issues them, or is so slow settling that validity by other means that large numbers of its citizens become involved in losses as a consequence, it cannot be regarded as clear of blame, or at least of indebtedness."