Against Intellectual Monopoly

can
figure that out by yourself. In fact, we are also sparing you the stories of the many other fights poor Tesla lost against some of the great "inventors" and
"entrepreneurial geniuses" of the time, Edison foremost. The bottom line is
that Tesla never got to see the rewards of his genius.

    We beg you to note that the issue here is not whether Tesla or Marconi
was the rightful monopolist of radio. Rather, the moral of this story is that
simultaneous inventions are frequent; they are the rule and not the exception. The moral is that the patent system prevents simultaneous inventions
from being recognized and used by society. And the moral, finally, is that
the patent system destroys productive capacity, generates useless and damaging monopoly, and, last but not least, humiliates and destroys decent and
humble geniuses like Aleksander Popov and Nikola Tesla.
    The story of injustice to Nikola Tesla has a tragicomic ending: in 1943,
the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's radio patent, reversing the earlier
decision of the U.S. Patent Office. Of course, Tesla was dead by this time -
and indeed that is why he was awarded the patent. The U.S. government had
been sued by the Marconi Company for use of its patents during the First
World War. By awarding the patent to Tesla, the government eliminated the
claim by Marconi - and faced no similar claim from Tesla, who, being dead,
was unable to sue.
Locking and Unlocking the Skies
    As the radio was invented by the great inventor Marconi, so was the airplane
invented by the great Wright Brothers.44
    Again, the popular history turns out to be rather misleading. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sir George Cayley (1773-1857), a British
engineer, had already written down and detailed the necessary specifications
for the design of a successful airplane. The main difficulties were the lack
of a lightweight power source and the control of flight, especially changing
direction and altitude. Otto Lilienthal (1848-96), a German follower of
Cayley, had made many successful flights on a hang gliders built by himself,
thereby learning a number of crucial things about the management of flying.
It is to Lilienthal, in fact, that the idea of wing warping is to be attributed.
However, he killed himself in the tentative beginning of applying power to
the hang glider. When the Wright brothers applied for the first patent in
1902, it was for the system of flight control obtained by the combined uses
of warping and the rudder - that is, a very marginal improvement over the
existing technology.
    It should be noted as well that modern airplanes are not controlled
by wing warping, but rather by movable control surfaces - elevators and ailerons. These were invented not by the Wright brothers, but by Glenn
Curtiss - a fact that did not prevent the Wright brothers from suing Glenn
Curtiss on the basis of their patent for wing warping.

    Indeed, the story of the Wright brothers is not so terribly different from
those of James Watt and Marconi: like Watt and Marconi, they made a
marginal improvement to an existing technology and then used the patent
system in an effort to monopolize an entire industry. The Wright brothers
were merely less successful - perhaps lacking a politically connected partner
such as Boulton's or Marconi's aristocratic connections - and were also
unable to prevent innovation from taking place in France, where most
serious airplane development took place beginning around 1907. Because
we have probably tired you with the details of Marconi's story, we will spare
you that of the Wrights.
    But at least the Wright brothers were the undisputed first, were they not?
Well, maybe. When you are done reading this book - or this paragraph,
if you are impatient - go to the omnipresent Google, and enter "Mad
Pearse, also known as Bamboo Dick" and then hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky"
button.
Tele-things
    Similar stories could and should be told, in sequence, for the many "telethings" that, since the middle of the nineteenth century, have revolutionized
our way of living: the telegraph, the telephone, and the television.45 Nothing
really new would be added, though, to the lessons learned so far, and
some of those stories, in particular the one about the telephone and the
growth of the Bell monopoly, do not make for a simple and entertaining
summary.
    In a nutshell, the telegraph, the telephone, and the television are clear
cases of simultaneous