The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1896-11-12
BELA rELEpnoNE CASE.


Before the supreme Court.
Washington, Nov. 11.-Ferdinand P.
Fish, counsel for the Bell Telephone
company, finished his argument in the
supreme court this afternoon, in op-
position to the demand of the govern
ment that the patent for the Berliner
transmitter issued in 1891 be cancelled
for fraud in the Illegal issue from the
patent office. He claimed that the in
ventions in question were different.
He was followed by Joseph H. Choate
of New York. Mr.. Choate said it was
the first time and probably would be
the last that the court had been asked
to annul a grant not for any fault of
the grantee, but because of alleged
wrongful and illegal acts of the grantor
by it's agents He asserted the COM
pany had not failed by any act done
or undone to expedite the issue of the
patent. Every charge of fraud had
been abandoned or disproved.
These charges, he said, were cruel,
baseless, made in gross ignorance and
inspired by a malicious antagonist of
the Bell company. Mr.. Choate recalled
some established principles of law as
especially applicable to suits to annul
patents. One of these was that the
government occupied no better position
to do this than any other grantor, but
| must be governed by the same rules
of equity. The only distinction, he
said, was to the disadvantage of the
government because of the solemnity
and dignity of the grant under the seal
of the United States and the immense
Importance and necessity of title.
| Mr.. Choate contended that no extra
ordinary duty to speed the application
devolved upon the Bell company, which
did not rest equally upon every other
/ applicant for a patsnt His suggestion
that counsel for the government would
probably hold the supreme court par
tlceps criminis in the alleged fraud,
because it took fourteen months to de-
eide the Drawbaugh, waiting for which
was one of the causes of delay, caused
smile on part of the justices.
| Referring to the failure of Commits
sioner Mitchell to accept the decision
of the supreme court in the Drawburgh
case as finally disposing of the claims
made by that inventor, Mr.. Choate
charged that then was constituted
one of the most gigantic cabals to de-
| stroy the Bell Telephone company ever
known in the history of such a similar
| warfare. In the cabal the government
was represented in the person of it's
attorney general, who amended the bill
filed by him at Boston to annul the
Bell patent by inserting the very para
| graphs in Drawburgh's answer which
| the supreme court had declared to be
utterly without foundation.
| To the claim that the Berliner patent
was invalid because a patent had been
previously granted to the same appli-
cant for a similar invention, Mr.. Choate
answered that a court Of equity could
not entertain a bill to annul the patent
| for that reason. The law made the
| commissioner of patents the sole judge
of the law and facts upon which a pat
ent should be issued.
Causten Browne of Boston, special
assistant attorney general, concluded
| the argument in support of the govern
| ment'S bill. He contended that there
was something to be considered beyond
the mere technical right of the compa-
ny to a patent and the duty of the
commissioner to issue it; the commits
sioner's duty was to issue only such
patents as did not conflict with the
rights of the public, and in this action,
as charged in the bill and sustained by
Judge Carpenter there rested upon the
company an extraordinary duty to
speed the application by every means
known to the law, and if it failed to do
so that failure invalidated the patent
With the conclusion of Mr.. Brownies
argument the case went to the court
for consideration. A decision is expect
ed in the course of the present term.