Connectedness

Many ideas people have occur at the same time or in close proximity.  Perhaps, this suggests a collective conscience.  For instance, Alexander Graham Bell is credited for patenting the telephone, but at the about same time he applied a German, Johann Philipp Reis, also applied for the same patent.  It was such a short period of time that perhaps the German may have received the patent if perhaps he spent less time warming his lunch, or his wife hadn’t nagged him to take out the garbage sooner rather than later.  Who was first?  And, more importantly; does it matter?  I understand that patents and ideas are very important to business, yet it seems absurd to give a financial monopoly to an inventor, when it was really two or more that had the idea at the same time.  These sorts of things end up in courts, but when it comes to who is first, I wonder if there is usually or even occasionally justice.