Antonio Meucci could not pay $10 to renew his telephone caveat, Bell got the patent, and Meucci died before the courts ruled

Antonio Meucci, an Italian immigrant, built a voice device he called the teletrofono, first in Havana and then in New York. In his Staten Island house he wired rooms together, including a line to his wife's bedroom. He spent his savings, demonstrated the device in 1860 and had it described in an Italian-language newspaper, but could not bring it to market. Giuseppe Garibaldi lived in his house for a time. After an accident left Meucci in hospital, his wife sold his models to pay for treatment. Unable to afford a full patent, he filed a one-year caveat on 28 December 1871. He could not pay the $10 renewal after 1874. He lost his working models at a laboratory linked to Western Union and was living on public assistance. Alexander Graham Bell, who had worked in the same laboratory, received the telephone patent in March 1876. The House resolution of 2002 states that if he had paid the fee, no patent could have been issued to Bell. In 1887 the US government sued to annul Bell's patent for fraud. The Supreme Court let the case go to trial. Meucci died in 1889. The case was dropped as moot when the patent expired in 1893, without deciding who invented the telephone. That resolution, House Resolution 269, passed on 11 June 2002 and recognises his work. It has no legal effect.