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,
Thomson-Houston Electric Company the arc lamp and dynamo patent disputes between them. Thomson-Houston was later merged with the Edison General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York (arranged by J. P. Morgan), to form the General Electric Company in 1892, with plants in Lynn and Schenectady, both of which remain to this day as the two original GE factories. British Thomson-Houston (BTH) was created as a subsidiary of (American) General Electric in May 1896. It was previously known as Laing, Wharton and Down which was founded in 1886. BTH became part of Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) in 1928, which saw BTH merged with its