The Portland daily press., 1888-03-20
IN BELLS FAVOR.
Supreme Court Decision in the Tele-
phone Cases.
Bell Entitled to Patents as a DIscoy
error and Inventor.
Review of the Claims in Behalf OF
Refs and Drawbaugh.

WASHINGTON March 19.-The United
States supreme courts decision in the tele-
phone case was read this afternoon by JUS
tice Blatchford, Chief Justice Waite, who
prepared it, being indisposed. The cases
covered by the decision are six, one coming
from Massachusetts, one from Pennsylvania
and four from New York. In the first five
cases the appellants are Amos T.. Dolbear ct
al, the Molecular Telephone Company.
Clay Commercial Telephone Company, Peo-
pies Telephone Company and the Overland
Telephone Company. In the sixth the Bell
Telephone Company is the appellant against
the Molecular Telephone Company. The
Chief Justice began the opinion with re-
view of the question raised as to the scope
of the fifth clause of Bells patent Of March
7, 1876; that is, whether the patent was for
the art or process Of transmitting articulate
speec, ,hor merely for apparatus by which that
object could be obtained. The court is Of
the opinion that Bell discovered that speech
could be transmitted by gradually changing
the intensity of a continuous electric current,
so as to make it correspond exactly to the
changes liz density of the air caused by the
sound Of the voice. This was his art. He
then devised way in which these changes
Of intensity could be made and speech actu-
ally transmitted. Thus the art was put in
condition for practical use. In doing this,
both discovery and invention were in
volyed. For such discoveries and such in
ventions, the law has given the discoyerer
and inventor the right to patent as discov-
erer for useful art and as an inventor, for
a means devised to make the discovery OF
actual value.
cry by Phillip Reis, was considered. Reis,
the Chief Justice said discovered how to re-
produce musical tones but no more. He
could sing through his apparatus, but could
not talk, and conceded this. After review
ing the history of the Refs invention, the
Chief Justice said: BELL discovered that
Reis's failures were due to wrong princi-
pie; that Reis's intermittent current could
not reproduce artlculate speech, but that the
true way was to operate on an unbroken cur
rent by Increasing and diminishing its in
tensity. Refs never thought of this and he
failed to transmit speech Geographically"
After reviewing briefly the claims Of DIR.
Wander Weyde, James w. McDonough and
Cromwell +. Varley, and showing those
claims TO have no bearing upon the validity
of Bells patents the Chief Justice took up
the case OF Daniel Drawbaugh Of Pennsyl-
vania, and reviewed 1t at great length. He
said the court had studied with care the de-
positions taken in such large numbers to
the instruments, put In evidence as exhibits
and which antedate the instruments of Bell
and IL these dispositions contained all the tes
timony in the case it would be more difficult
to reach the conclusion that Drawbaugh's
claim was not sustained In the courts
opinion, their effect was completely over
come BY Drawbaugh's silence from the time
of his visit to the Centennial until he was
put forward by the promoters OF the Peoples
Telephone Company, nearly four years after
wards, to contest the claims of Bell.
The Chief Justice said: "We do not doubt
that Drawbaugh may have conceived the
idea that speech could be transmitted dis
tanee by means of electricity and was expe-
rimenting upon the subject but to hold that
he had discovered the art of doing it before
Bell, would be to construe the testimony
without regard to the ordinary laws that
govern human conduct. We decide the
Drawbaugh defence not made out"
The Chief Justice then took up the allega-
tions of colusion and fraud made in the
filed in the patent office, did not contain his
present fourth claim or any description of
his variable resistance method and that all
which now appears In specification on that
subject, including the fourth claim was sur
reptitiously interpolated afterwards, aud de-
cided them untenable. The Chief Justice
reviewed briefly the case of the Bell company
against the Molecular Telephone company,
whice involves one Of the claims of patent
issued to Bell, January 80, 1877. The court
below held that the fifth claim of this patent
was anticipated by the Schellen magnet. The
supreme court reyerses this decision.
Justices Field, Harlan and Bradley do not
concur on the ground that the evidence sus-
- ~. u ~