[D0231AAH], Letter from Eugene Howard Lewis to Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, James Douglas Jerrod Kelley, May 21st, 1902
https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D0231AAH
Transcription
May 21, 1902. Commander J. D. J. Kelley, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, Maritime Building, 8 & 10 Bridge St., New York. My Dear Sir: Re Edison. I desire in some appropriate way to bring to the attention of the Board, a patent granted to Mr. Edison on December 29th, 1891, numbered 465,971, covering a Means for Transmitting Signals Electrically. This patent will expire on December 29th, 1908, and has therefore nearly seven years to run, not being limited in its life by any foreign patent covering the same invention. I do not consider myself competent to express an opinion upon the value of this patent to the wireless telegraphy art, but I am informed that Mr. Betts has examined the patent and formed the opinion that there is nothing in it which impairs the novelty of Marconi's contributions to the same art. But I am further informed by Mr. Betts, that investigation may be necessary to enable the question to be determined whether or not the claims of the Edison patent do cover details of construction, which might be useful in the Marconi system. Mr. Betts would of course be more competent than anyone that I know of, to determine what would be the availability of this patent in the hands of the Marconi Company, as a basis for preventing the use by other persons of the different elements embodied within its claims, as well as what would be its availability in the hands of an adverse interest, in preventing a like use on the part of the Marconi Company. X X X X X X X XX X Yours truly,