[PT015AAI], Letter from Dyer and Seely to U.S. Patent Office. Commissioner, February 21st, 1889

https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/PT015AAI

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Title

[PT015AAI], Letter from Dyer and Seely to U.S. Patent Office. Commissioner, February 21st, 1889

Editor's Notes

It is not understood what bearing the patent to Smith cited has on the method claims in this case. It certainly has no more to do with the first claim than any telephone line, and it is submitted that there can be no doubt that applicant has invented something over the ordinary use of telephones. It appears from the record that applicant was the first to transmit intelligence by producing arbitrary signals by sound waves at a telephone transmitter and reproducing them in the form of sound at a telephone receiver. This is the method which applicant claims, and there is no such reference to such a method in the Smith patent. Smith's only idea was to use his telephones in the ordinary way by transmitting and receiving articulate speech. It is not seen how the fact that Smith's invention was for railway train telegraphy and applicant describes this as one of fhe uses of his invention, makes Smith a good reference. Even if applicant used Smith's precise apparatus, he would be entitled to a patent for his new method of operation, it being well established both in the Courts and in the Patent Office, that a new method even if it is carried out by old appratus, may be a patented, invention. If the general method set forth in the first claim is patentable so is the specific use of such method by induction as specified in other claims.##Smith has no musical telephone transmitter as claimed in the 4th claim. Neither has Lockwood cited against the 5th and 6th claims both of which include this element. The English patent cited does not seem to contain the specific combination of the 8th, 9th, and 10th claims.##Reconsideration of the last Official action Is asked.

Date

1889-02-21

Type

Folder/Volume ID

PT015-F

Microfilm ID

45:607

Document ID

PT015AAI

Publisher

Thomas A. Edison Papers, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University
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