10 Most Unethical Business Actions

#8 Thomas Edison/Radio Corporation of America: The Unethical Monopoly

It is hard to be creative, to come up with new ideas and to invent things from nowhere. Unfortunately, in history there are lots of stories of intellectual property being snatched, at times aggressively, by big corporations.

Thomas Edison and the companies he formed (RCA & General Electric) stands as an evidence for this story. The company had the habit of misusing patent system for profit. Hollywood is the home of the movie industry and it is known worldwide only because the film-makers in the 1920s were forced to abandon the east-coast because of the high royalties that Edison charged them for use of camera technologies. Edison even hired goons to harass them.

Edison’s RCA (Radio Corporation of America) caused untold damage for inventors of the 20th century. The official company policy was that “The Radio Corporation doesn’t pay royalties” and it boasted “we collect them [royalties]”. The inventors and small businesses were denied to have license, forcing the companies to collapse because of the mounting legal fees.

This whole practice was extremely unethical as the technologies were prevented by Edison’s Companies from reaching the market. The inventor of electronic television, Philo T. Farnsworth hoped that “television would bring people together and prevent war”, but because of the RCA interventions, television never reached the market until the 50s.