PATENT-OFFICE PRINTED MATTER.

"Those interested in the doings of the Patent-Office will be astonished to learn that an order has recently been given to destroy nearly all the copies of printed specifications of expired patents. Two hundred and fifty tons of these valuable documents have already been carted away, and the process of destruction still continues. The only reason given for this is that it is difficult to find storage room, and it has therefore been determined to reduce the stock of copies of specifications to five apiece. The amount which these have cost to print is something over £700,000, more than that sum having been spent in this way since 1852, when the Patent Law Reform Act authorised the printing of specifications. Large numbers have, of course, been given away, and still greater numbers have been sold; but the stock still remaining is very large, and the greater part of it is in constant demand. This wholesale destruction of public property is causing bitter complaints among the patent agents and consulting engineers who have been informed of it, as it will give much additional trouble to those employed in patent cases. The usual practice has been to purchase copies of the specifications required for such purposes, and the agents were then able to work in their own offices. It will now be necessary for them to do much of their work at the PatentOffice Library. It is also stated, but on this point we are not certainly informed, that the library of the Patent-Office is to be 'weeded' in order to give more space."

Every one will be glad that the above quotation is either an entire misrepresentation or a gross exaggeration.

There surely ought to be a collection of such documents, and the more important Blue Books and white, made and kept accessible at some one place in every county and colony. The reasons why the Patent-Office veritable treasures have not been generally sought are threefold. First, They are published in a rather clumsy form; Second, The willingness of the Government to make free grants of them has been almost unknown; and Third (if we mistake not), Government expected they would be bound at the expense of the recipients.

We suggest that, if it is not too late, one or two hundred sets should be rescued from the threatened destruction and offered in a bound state to public institutions, on condition that in each case of presentation, the public shall continue to enjoy access to

them for consultative use; failing which, the institution to return them or pay for them. It is a grievous and a strange mistake to suppose that specifications cease to be of value after the period of privilege has expired. Why, according to theory, it is only in view of that time-the time when any and every body is at liberty to adopt the invention that the specifications, i.e. the direction how to make and work the invention, becomes necessary. Can a better illustration than the lavish and illogical waste mourned over in the newspaper extract be wanted of the call for an Invention Board, composed of men acquainted practically with trade, drawn from different parts of the kingdom, and desirous of introducing on all hands an improved administration of the office, which also they would be specially capable of devising. See Abolition of Patents, p. 289.

THE PETITIONS TO PARLIAMENT.

I have received the printed copies of four of the fourteen or fifteen petitions presented to the House of Commons respecting the Patent Bill.

The first is from the Glasgow Philosophical Society, in anticipation of legislation, and has sufficiently been adverted to on p. 26. Another from the same Society desires that the Bill may be amended.

It states that the Bill proceeds on "the erroneous assumption that the real value of an invention can be measured by the rapidity by which it becomes remunerative and able to bear heavy taxation." "As a rule, it is the most original and important inventions which require the longest time to be appreciated, and, as generally the most revolutionary, have to encounter the greatest obstacles and opposition before they are adopted." The peculiarity portrayed in this too strong representation, which is given forth as a reason against "increasing the weight of taxation at the third, seventh, and twelfth years," certainly may be urged as a reason why the length of the term of patent should vary according to the differing nature of inventions (a short term being enough for some, as we are so frequently told), whereas the Society (inconsistently) favours a uniform term of twenty-one years; and it furnishes proof that, if there are to be patents at all, some inventions would not be under, though others may be over burdened by the payments. complained of. There must be acknowledged to be strong and weighty testimony in favour of progressively increasing charges, "with the object of extinguishing" those which ought not to live very long. The objection to this method of extinguishing is that it, while imposing a burden by no means heavy in the case of inventions that are too remunerative, that is, inventions which tax people oppressively, fails in its most important and most desired application. It does not answer what ought to be its main purpose.

The Society maintains, in spite of frequently repeated allegations to the contrary, that the public is already sufficiently protected against undeserving patents by the condition "they shall be void if the inventions are not new or useful," and that if the applicant were allowed a "patent with a statement of the objections appended thereto, with such a notice added to their other

sources of information . . . the public could not be imposed upon, and the patentee . . . would be very chary of attempting to enforce" his claims "against the public. But the applicant should not be called on to fight any battle with the public before he obtains his patent." Do these most extraordinary views really proceed from an association that hails from Glasgow? "Heads, I win; tails, you lose," is a joke not to be played off in this serious business. Alas! the "public" is too easily mulcted. Who is to be its guardian and vindicator? Why should it be thus heedlessly exposed to plunderings and "never venture, never win" malpractices?

"Assum

The next remarks refer to an assertion not less bold. ing an invention to be original and novel, the inventor earns his right to a patent sufficiently by disclosing it to the public." In plain English, to disclose an invention which may be of the minimum of originality, and may be a mere anticipation by a few days of an inevitable discovery or publication of a method or thing, entitles to a patent which may bring to the man who has the start not only a right to hinder others, many of whom would in ordinary course acquire the information independently of him, but a right to tax his fellows, and this though he be a foreigner, to the extent it may be of hundreds of thousands of pounds (for this large sum has again and again been claimed for very trifles).

The petition objects to an inventor being "compelled" to work his invention himself or "to make efforts to force it into use." The Society is, as to the first of these matters of compulsion, out of harmony with the general voice of Europe, and as to the second with at any rate the ex-Postmaster-General, as we have seen. Let the reader observe how completely the patent system has been perverted from its original design, which just was to set the patentee to the very work remonstrated against, and it contemplated not at all the other requirement (forcing into use), which is insisted on nowadays only because of the perversion. What would in those days have been thought of the reason the Society gives"The inventor is forced to give up half or two-thirds of his property [the patent!] to any capitalist who will advance money to enable him to comply with the law by working it. Members of the Society" and others "have been forced to spend very large sums in endeavouring to get their inventions worked in foreign countries,

and after much expenditure had to abandon their inventions, which were in several cases immediately taken up by the public." Two corollaries: first, the monopoly privilege, i.e. a patent, was thereby demonstrated to be unsuitable for these times, along with

the modern custom, almost an obligation of duty, to patent in several countries. What capital, energy, time, is sufficient to enable an inventor to carry on businesses on both sides of the Channel and both sides of the Atlantic? Second, The legitimate escape from the dilemma is either by abolishing patents or by establishing international arrangements, especially if pecuniary rewards, contributed proportionally by several States, were adopted. See Reports of Select Committees, 1872, and Vienna Congress, 1873.1 A most remarkable dictum in opposing compulsory licenses proceeds from this philosophical body—"The only way of regulating the license-duty is to leave it to the operation of the laws of supply and demand.” What is the operation of these laws in a monopoly? What has the Society, too, to say as to the foreigners who are not subject to the monopoly?

Another petition is from the Wolverhampton Trades' Council (with which correspond petitions from four other Trades' Councils -showing that there has been again a whipping up). It well states that the Bill should give inventors the prospect of " a fair remuneration for their time, trouble, and the expense they have incurred." As usual, these modest words cover a demand for unlimited monopoly, remuneration without any limit fair to their fellow-countrymen.

The following is hard to coincide in:-"That the stamp-duties contained in the second schedule are excessive and unnecessary. That seeing the great benefits inventions have been to the country, it is unwise and impolitic, and against the spirit of the age, to tax those things which are imperatively necessary for the good of the community further than is necessary to defray actual expenses. And also taking into consideration that a patent can be obtained in America for the sum of seven pounds sterling, and that a passage from this country to that can be obtained for the sum of six pounds ten shillings, it is necessary that if this country is to hold its pre-eminence as a manufacturing country, the stampduties on patents for inventions should be reduced to what will pay the expenses of the Patent Office, and the profit now made out of the fees be sacrificed by the consolidated fund for the good of the manufacturing industries of the country."

1 "Pour remédier aux inconvénients de la variété de legislations et de la complication qui en résultat pour les inventeurs et l'industrie, M. Macfie, Président de la Chambre de Commerce de Liverpool au Congrès des Sciences Sociales de Gand, en 1863, aproposé de rendre cette législation internationale et uniforme. Cette idée semble avoir l'avenir."-Garnier, Traité de l'Économie Politique, 7th edition, 1875. VOL. II.

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