Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-03-20

in Favor of Beu-Four Judges Out of
 Seven Support His Claim to Priority
 of Invention.
 WASHINGTON, March 20.-Mr. Justice Blatchford yesterday announced the decision of the United States supreme court in the telephone cases 1t is in favor of the Bell Telephone company on all the points in every one of the cases. The opinion was indorsed by only four justices out of the seven, but its majority of one was, of course, ample to make it final. Justices Gray and Lamar did not sit in the case Justice Bradley read dis senting opinion, in which Justices Field and Harlan concur. The cases now decided are five in number. The Bell company has been plaintiff in every one of them, and has beaten the defendants in the lower courts The companies concerned are the Dolbear, the Drawbaugh, the Clay, of Philadelphia; the Molecular and the Overland, of New York.
 The decision reviews the charge of fraud and collusion in the patent office, by means of which Bell, it was alleged, obtained sur reptitious information with regard to the inventions of his rivals, and then amended his own specifications The court holds that there is not the slightest evidence to support this charge, or to cast the least reflection upon the integrity of Bell or his attorneys. Justices Bradley, Harlan and Field dissent because of Daniel Drawbaughs claim Their opinion is that the evidence shows beyond cavil that Drawbaugh was the inventor of the speaking telephone, although he did not realize this or know the importance of it.
 The court holds that the force of the testi- mony showing that Drawbaugh had tele- phones in use before the invention of Bell is broken by his own conduct and the indiffer- ence he manifested about his invention until years after Bells telephones were in general use. The Drawbaugh claim is declared to be unsustained. He slept too long on his rights. The expenses in the Drawbaugh suit were $1OO, 1000 side.
 In considering the question of the alleged anticipation of Bells invention by the tele- phone of Reiss, in Germany, the court holds that Reiss discovered a means of transmit ting musical notes, and nothing more. Bells patent, being for the process or art of trans 1nitting speech, would have been just as valid even if he had used the apparatus of Reiss in developi ,g it. The court holds that the ap- paratus of Reiss wus not successful in trans mitting speech, and that his invention was not in any respect an anticipation of the dis covery which was made by Bell.
 The Drawbaugh suit was fought more bit terly than any of the others. It lasted for years, and Justice Wallace finally gave the decision in Bells favor. Drawbaugh is a Pennsylvania mechanic, poor, but of 8 very ingenious turn of mind. He claimed, and brought rude instruments into court to sub- stantiate his claim, that in 1872 he carried on conversation over a wire several hundred yards long. He claimed that he was too poor to stand the expenses of getting a patent. Still, it was shown that he had financial packers, who about that time enabled him to get other patents
 The controversy with all the claimants to the invention of the teleph me, Daniel Draw baugh, Philip Reiss, A. k. Eaton, Elisha Gray, Thomas A. Edison and others, turns upon the right of Bell to control the whole art of the electric transmission of speech by means of his patent of 1876.