Watermotor Turbine design ownership dispute in Bolivia
Sunday, March 22, 2009 5:16 PM
From:
"davis ron"
View contact details
To:
kunzler@kmiplaw.com
Dear Mr. Kunzler,
I am an "appropriate technology" inventor from California living for
many years in Bolivia. My wife, Diane Bellomy, and I have a private aid project here called Campo Nuevo, a 17 year old volunteer program working in state children's homes called Los Amigos del Hogar, as well as a 30 year old textile art business called Artesania Sorata. (artesaniasorata.com)
On the appropriate technology side our chief project has been to develop a small water powered turbine which can be used to drive machines such as grain mills and woodworking tools directly with water power--a "Watermotor" (watermotor.net).
There was an article about this project in Home Power Magazine (June/July 1999)
I spent considerable time and expense on this project, including building and testing many turbines wheels before finally settling on a "turgo" type turbine design from Sweden being offered to the members of the Yahoo microhydro e-group. There was absolutely no assertion of design ownership made at the time.
For this turbine wheel I designed and patented a unique power control system which allows the turbine power output to be controlled as easily as that of an electric motor, allowing it to be safely used to directly drive machines.
(This device is shown in animation on the watermotor.net web site)
We conducted the first laboratory testing of this turbine wheel, built a rural demonstration site over the Andes from La Paz to show it running a variety of machines (see watermotorturbine on Youtube), produced a video, website and set up production.
Then, after all this, an engineer in Salt Lake City named Joseph Hartvigsen, who had seen our video, began claiming that his partner in Sweden owned the Swedish turbine wheel design, and that I now owed him $32 per turbine as "royalty" payments.
That began about eight years ago.
It was Hartvigsen himself who had originally suggested we use this turgo turbine, which he himself had called an "orphan" design.
Hartvigsen and his new "partner" in Sweden, Peter Ruyter, began telling a story that the design came from an old widow in Sweden named Ingela Carlsson, whose husband had invented it, and that Ruyter had bought the design from her. Hartvigsen now said it was protected by an "un-registered copyright".
They have publicly accused me to my colleagues worldwide on the Yahoo microhydro e-group, as they do to this day, of cheating her out of royalty payments.
I told them many times that I would be very willing to discuss royalty payments if they could only prove there was any such person as the Widow Ingela Carlsson, and proof of sale of the design to Ruyter, and that as an "un-registered copyright" the design was protected for a functioning internal machine part here in Bolivia.
In fact I had made substantial changes to the original design by producing it in metal(the original was plastic)changing the shape, color, weight, etc.
Their widow Carlsson story was suspect from the beginning. They could not say where she lived, what her husband's(the inventor)name was, nor produce any proof of Ruyter's purchase of the design, or cite the date of this purchase.
The Swedish patent office told me that anyone claiming design protection was expected to be able to prove it. They said they had no registered copyrights or patents at all on this type of turbine.
I wrote to the Swedish police in every department of the country, the Swedish government census offices, and welfare agencies, and the Swedish microhydro association looking for an Ingela Carlson and her husband without results.
I also offered a $1000 reward to five Swedish detective agencies and posted a reward offer in eleven Swedish newspapers---without any results at all.
My conclusion is that the entire widow Ingella Carlson story is a complete hoax fabricated by Hartvigsen and Ruyter in order to take over a design in public domain by fraud, after I had spent years working on developing it.
Over seven years neither they, nor anyone else has been able to prove any such person as this widow, who they tell everyone I am cheating, exists.
Hartvigsen has almost certainly told everyone he knows and works with the story of the widow he is protecting, so it would be very damaging to him for it to be shown to be a complete fabrication.
I also believe he was telling this story to his co-workers at Ceramatec when they were testing a anaerobic setting cellulose fiber re-inforced silicone rubber compound (FiberSil) I had invented and, at Hartvigsen's suggestion, submitted to Ceramatec for testing.
Later I learned from Hartvigsen himself that he and the new company owner, Ashok Joshi, had made themselves "co-inventors" of my compound, and for years had kept my business correspondence to Ceramatec out of the company official files.
A central idea behind my Watermotor design was to develop a small turbine which could be locally produced in small workshops all over the "third world". I would never have chosen a copyright or patented turbine wheel design. It seemed as though Hartvigsen and Ruyter deliberately waited until I had done all the work to develop the Watermotor before beginning their takeover campaign against me.
In other words, it was a set-up.
Since then there has been an unrelenting effort to destroy my Watermotor project and my reputation in the microhydro community.
They contact my clients and convince them to cancel their orders.
They sent someone to threaten my co-workers here in Bolivia.
Defamatory messages about me and my product are posted on the Yahoo microhydro e-group site, to which the list owner does not allow me to reply.
Ruyter has sent me photos of himself with guns, and made threats. He has publicly denounced me as a "turbine terrorist".
I have many, many e-mails proving everything I have told you here.
I will send you some examples, if I may. There is a very recent posting to the microhydro e-group repeating his claims.
The Watermotor is my life's work and I simply cannot let these individuals destroy it out of their greed.
Please help us if you can.
P.S. My wife and I may have to return to the U.S. in order for her to be treated at the CDC in Atlanta. My doctor has advised living at a lower altitude for me because of a heart and lung condition. I am 62. (La Paz is at 12,500 ft.)
All the best, and thank you for reading this.
Ron Davis,
Campo Nuevo,
La Paz, Bolivia
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