Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell with Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps to discuss the motion. Many Italian Canadians were upset by the motion due to long held beliefs that Meucci was the telephone's inventor, according to the Italian-language weekly "L'Ora Di Ottawa". The motion was still referred to years after its passage, in reference to Bell's primacy in the invention of the telephone. In an article on author Charlotte Gray's new book "Reluctant Genius", the "Ottawa Citizen" noted "…Bell invented the telephone company… [and] thanks to a 2002 motion, the Parliament of Canada continues to recognize Bell as the [telephone's] inventor". Canadian Parliamentary Motion on
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