Morning journal and courier., 1888-11-13
ANImpoKrANT DEoIs1oN,

The He'll Telephone Company De- feated i'm the supreme Court of Hhe United Seates-ReasOns for 1he De-
 cision-A Patent Obtained by Fraud may be Cancelled.
 WASHINGTON, Nov. 12.-The Supreme
 court of the United States to-day rendered an
 opinion in favor of the government in the
 case of the United States against the Ameri-
 can Bell Telephone company, brought here
 on appeal from the decision of the Circuit
 court of Massachusetts, sustaining the de-
 murrer entertained by the Bell company to
 the governments suit. The decision of the
 court to- day reverses the judgment of the
 Circuit court and remands the case to that
 court for trial on it's merits. Solicitor
 General Jenks, acting as attorney, brought suit in equity in the Circuit court of Massa- chusetts to have the Bell company's patent cancelled and declared null and void on the ground that it was procured by fraud and that Bell was not the first inventor of the telephone. The Bell company, through it's attorney ,waiving for the time any answer to the allegations made in the governments bill in equity, filed a demurrer in which they as- serted that the United States had no right, in the absence of special statute granting that
 
 an invention. They declared that such suit could only be brought by a private par ty and not by the government. The Circuit court sustained the Bell company's demurrer and refused to entertain the governments bill. From that decision the United States took an appeal to the Supreme court, which to-day, through Justice Miller, reversed the decision of the lower court in long and elaborate opinion.
 Justice Miller first took up the plea of multifariousness urged by the Bell company and said that it could not hold good; that the suit brought by the United States al- though it sought to cancel two patents, is- sued year apart, really related to the same subject. AS to the Bell company's conten tions that the United States could not bring, and that no Circuit court could entertain 8 suit to cancel patent brought in the name of the government, no matter whether fraud had been committed or not, Justice Miller said that there was no question that an indi- vidual had right to judicially seek redress for a wrong committed against him, and yet it was contended that the United Statee, the representative of 60,000,000 of people, could do nothing in their behalf. Justice Miller said further that such a state of things would be great anomaly in system of government like ours The patent system, was derived from the same clause in the constitution as that relating to public lands. The government, although no express statute has been enacted, it had repeatedly been held had the right to set aside land patents ob tained by fraud, and the same thing was true of patents for inventions. The conten- tion that the government should not take action because remedy existed with private parties, he said, did not hold good. One per- son might bring suit against the holder of patent and obtain judgment in that peculiar case and yet other parties who subsequently brought suit would be unable to bring proof. The government alone had the power to bring suit which would finally settle the whole matter.
 In conclusion the court says: "We think the doctrine that the United States is not en- titled to obtain the cancellation of an instru- ment obtained from 1t by frand-an instru- ment which affects the whole public, whose protection from such a fraud is eminently the duty of the United States-is not sound. The decree of the Circuit court of Massachusetts the governments bill is therefore reversed and the cause remanded to that court with directions to overrule the demur- Ter, with leave to the defendants to plead or answer, or both, within a reasonable time to be fixed by that court"
 Opinion by MT. Justice Miller. Mir. Jus- tice Gray was not present at the argument and took no part in the decision of this case. Freight Rates Out 25 Per