John Rohner
John Rohner |
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John Rohner (John P. Rohner) is an American businessman and self-taught inventor known for promoting a claimed "plasma engine" said to run on noble gases. He founded and led the companies PlasmERG, Inc., Inteligentry, Ltd., and PTP Licensing, Ltd., which promoted the technology to investors. In 2013 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Rohner and the companies, alleging that the claims made about the engine were fraudulent; the courts subsequently entered judgment against him.
Biography
Rohner's public work centers on his effort, begun in the late 2000s, to revive and commercialize the "noble gas engine" attributed to the Hungarian-born inventor Joseph Papp, who received a U.S. patent for such a device in 1984. Rohner organized PlasmERG, Inc. in 2008, initially operating out of Iowa, and later formed Inteligentry, Ltd. and PTP Licensing, Ltd., which were associated with Nevada.
Work
Rohner described the operating principle of his engine as a "Plasmic Transition Process" (PTP). He claimed that a sealed cylinder charged with a mixture of inexpensive and abundant noble gases (such as helium) could be electrically excited into a plasma state and made to expand and contract, driving a piston without combustion, without consuming fuel in the conventional sense, and without producing exhaust emissions. He stated that such an engine would replace the internal combustion engine, and that patents on the process were pending.
Rohner promoted the technology directly to the public and to investors, including at stockholder meetings and trade shows, and repeatedly announced that a working engine would be publicly demonstrated. No independently verified public demonstration of a working noble-gas plasma engine was ever produced, and the claims were not accepted by the scientific or engineering mainstream.
SEC litigation
On 28 February 2013 the SEC filed a civil complaint against Rohner, Inteligentry, PlasmERG, and PTP Licensing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada (SEC v. Inteligentry, Ltd., No. 2:13-cv-00344), and obtained an emergency order freezing assets. The SEC alleged that the defendants had raised more than $1.8 million from roughly 98 investors in the United States and abroad by claiming that they had developed, tested, and patented an operational plasma engine. According to the complaint, the defendants had never run an engine fueled by noble gases and had never obtained patents relating to the engine or the plasma technology, and Rohner had falsely told investors that he held advanced degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. The SEC further alleged that a substantial portion of investor funds had been spent on personal expenses.
On 31 March 2015 the District Court granted the SEC summary judgment on liability against Rohner on all five claims in the complaint and appointed a receiver over the corporate defendants. A final judgment entered on 17 July 2017 ordered Rohner, jointly and severally with the corporate defendants, to pay $1,822,825 in disgorgement plus $411,100 in prejudgment interest, imposed a $750,000 civil penalty, and permanently enjoined him from participating in the issuance, offer, or sale of securities of entities promoting plasma engines and related technology. On 28 January 2019 a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit summarily affirmed the judgment.