IP Intrigue: From Patent Battle to Bestseller
| Author | Sylvie Castonguay |
| Position | WIPO Magazine editorial team, Communications and Public Outreach Division |
The Farnsworth Invention opened on Broadway in December to packed audiences. Aaron Sorkin's fast moving play follows the race to invent television that pitted farm boy genius Philo T. Farnsworth against media mogul David Sarnoff.
Born in 1906, Farnsworth came up with the idea for what would become the television while still a schoolboy. Blackboard drawings from his high school chemistry class would even serve as evidence in a patent interference case. He filed a patent for the Image Dissector, the first completely electronic television system, in 1927. He demonstrated the "Image Dissector" to the press in 1928 - sending a dollar sign as a first image to his worried investors - and transmitted the first human images a year later. Farnsworth was granted patents for his moving picture broadcasts in 1930.
Like many inventors, Farnsworth built on the technological advances of other inventors before him. But he was the first to invent an electric television with no mechanical parts - he recognized early on that the broadcast of a satisfactory image required speed that would be impossible to generate mechanically.
Sarnoff, in charge of radio broadcasting at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and its president from 1930, saw the massive potential for television. In 1928 he decided to fund engineer Vladimir Zworykin's research on an electric television. Zworykin thought he would need only US$100,000 and two years to bring his project to fruition. Instead it took eight years, a visit to Farnsworth's laboratory - where Farnsworth gave him some of the answers to the technical problems he was having - and some US$50 million.
In 1931 Farnsworth refused Sarnoff's US$100,000 offer for his patent, starting a long legal battle with RCA which left him broke and unable to commercialize his patent. Farnsworth won the battle in 1939 when RCA was ordered to pay Farnsworth US$1,000,000 in royalties. But Sarnoff won the war when Zworykin's became the accepted standard for television.
The Broadway play blurs some of the historical facts - for example Farnsworth's patents were upheld in court, a fact the play denies. But as reviewer Vindu Goel (The Mercury News) comments, "It's great fun to watch-and offers some enduring lessons about business and technology."
Fanning the flames of contention - now smoldering for well over 100 years- journalist Seth Shulman's...
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