The Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition

This file consists of Edison's brief on appeal to the Commissioner of Patents in the case of Weston v. Latimer v. Edison, which involved conflicting claims over a method of uniting the carbon filament with the conducting wire in an incandescent lamp. An interference was declared between an application filed by Edison on January 21, 1881, and an application filed by African American inventor Louis H. Latimer (1848-1928) on March 5, 1881. On May 9, 1881, inventor and electrical manufacturer Edward Weston (1850-1936) was added as a party, his application having been filed four days earlier. A motion by Edison to dissolve the interference was granted by the Examiner of Interferences in November 1883 but, on appeal by Weston, reversed by the Examiners-in-Chief in May 1884. The case was appealed to the Commissioner of Patents in June 1884. A brief was filed by Edison's attorneys in February 1885, and depositions were taken in June and July. The decision of the Commissioner is not on the Patent Office file. A patent on Edison's invention was apparently never issued.