Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell The first session of Canada's 37th Parliament unanimously passed a Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell on June 21, 2002, to affirm that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone. The symbolic motion was a response to the 107th United States Congress' earlier resolution (HRes 269) of June 11, 2002, which recognized the contributions of Antonio Meucci. Due to a misleading press release issued by U.S. Congressman Vito Fossella, this was interpreted by some as establishing priority for the invention of the telephone to Meucci. The House of Representatives' Resolution
The Telephone Cases a far larger and better financed competitor than American Bell Telephone. Western Union advocated several more recent patent claims of Daniel Drawbaugh, Elisha Gray, Antonio Meucci and Philip Reis in a bid to invalidate Alexander Graham Bell's master and subsidiary telephone patents dating back to March 1876. Had Western Union succeeded it would have immediately destroyed the Bell Telephone Company and then Western Union stood to become the world's largest telecommunications monopoly in Bell's place. The U.S. Supreme Court came within one vote of overturning the Bell patent, thanks to the eloquence of lawyer Lysander Hill for the Peoples Telephone