Thomas Edison of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights and lowering the price of the electric lamp. On October 8, 1883, the US patent office ruled that Edison's patent was based on the work of William E. Sawyer and was, therefore, invalid. Litigation continued for nearly six years, until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison's electric light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid. To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, whose British patent had been awarded a year before Edison's,
Edison Manufacturing Company instruments, and other machinery. It also made kinetoscopes, phonograph cylinder wax, x-ray equipment, medical instruments, and electric fans in its factory in Silver Lake, New Jersey. From April 1895 to June 1908 William E. Gilmore was vice-president and general manager of the company. He was succeeded by the patent lawyer Frank Dyer. Edison's films were made by the Kinetograph Department of the Edison Manufacturing Company. The Edison Studios first produced kinetoscope films in Manhattan, then from 1905 in a studio in the Bronx. The company had the same senior executives as the more profitable National Phonograph Company, to which Edison