Journal of the Society of Arts : Volume XLIX, No. 2527 [‎703r] (31/36)

April 26, 1901.]
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY Oh ARTS.
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was to give the inventor a proper enjoyment of his
own invention, and that any question of compulsory
license should only arise when it was shown that the
monopoly had not been wisely and properly exercised.
He did not think any Patent-law reformers ought
to work, as far as the British Patent-law was
concerned, for a guarantee from the Govern
ment as to the validity of their patents. Such a
step was in the wrong direction, whether there was
examination or no examination. It would tend to a
number of good and useful patents being stopped from
mere nervousness. He was strongly of opinion,
that anything like an examination for subject-
matter or novelty would be a retrograde step. He
wished to enter a protest against the idea that an
anticipation 15 years old should not be allowed to in
validate. If 50 or 60 years were given different
considerations would arise, but the fact that even in
the term of 14 years good inventions frequently were
not brought into effective operation showed that
it would be unwise to limit a real anticipa
tion by such a measure of time as 15 years. It
would be far too much in the interests of people who
would endeavour to pick up patents, repatent them in
15 years, and attempt to prevent people engaged in
commerce using them. In regard to the kind of
examination which the inventor and the public were
entitled to have, he thought that when in the Patent-
office there was a mass of information, carefully
digested and indexed, it was very hard indeed upon
inventors if the Patent-office knew that they had been
travelling along a road which had been already
traversed not to tell them so, especially when they
were paying a large revenue to the country, there being
a surplus at the present time of about ^ 100,000 a
year from patent fees. He thought the public
in the same way were entitled to information. He
thought Mr. Wise hit the right nail on the head when
he said that no real harm would be done by endorse
ment, because it was only when an inventor ob
stinately refused to alter his specification that the
Patent-office exercised any compulsion. A great
deal had been said in the Press about an endorse
ment upon specifications being a great hardship to
inventors. After considerable experience he could
say deliberately that in 99 cases out of 100 it was a
bugbear, and an honest inventor was only too glad
to have his attention called to possible anticipations.
In sitting as law officer, some hundreds of bond-
fide oppositions, by persons having an interest in a
previous patent had been brought before him, and
these were met by the applicant abandoning any
claim to the points described in the previous specifi
cations. It was only people who wished to use
patents in a way they should not be used who raised
such objections. He joined in the chorus of disappro
bation of Mr. Siemens’ suggestion that a patent should
be invalid if it was not worked in four years. That was
introducing in the most aggravated form some of the
abuses of the foreign system. Pie thoroughly agreed
with what Mr. Carpmael had said. He could pro
duce to Mr. Siemens more than one specification of
his distinguished uncle, who came to England because
of the protection afforded to invention by the British
Patent-laws, which was never worked for anything like
three years from the date when it was taken out. The
same remark applied to the patents of Lord Kelvin and
Prof. Hughes, and was the common feature of some of
the most meritorious inventions ; so meritorious that
they had been extended by the favour of the Crown,
because they had not been placed before the public
until the last two or three years of the term. He
hoped the Report of the Committee upon which
he served with Mr. Moulton and Mr. Carpmael,
would be found to embody, at any rate,
improvements in the Patent-law founded upon
experience, properly regarding the interests both
of inventors and patentees, and he hoped the Govern
ment would be able to give practical effect to the-
recommendation.
Mr. Siemens, in reply, after acknowledging the vote
of thanks, said that it was his intention all through to
speak from the point of view of the manufacturer. On
looking into the historical portion of the subject it
was seen that the object of the first granting of
monopolies was to encourage manufacturers and not
inventors. Useful inventions had only in most ex
ceptional cases been made by outsiders; they
were usually discovered by people who had studied
the subject in all its branches and made care
ful experiments. He thought that if a patent
was not commercially taken up it should be
dropped; only those patents were of value which
were taken up. Professor Ayrton had said that it
was a great hardship if an inventor was before
his time, but he could not see why that should
prevent people from reaping the benefit who came
at the right moment. It was quite possible that
four years was not sufficient for compulsory
working, and that some modification would have
to be made by which the examiner had the right
to grant extension. The general idea he wished
to bring forward was that the man who worked,
the manufacturer, was a worthy person who ought
to be supported, and not the man who went about
with stray ideas without knowing what he was really
offering.
Mr. Siemens writes :—
Owing to the lateness of the hour I could not
reply very fully to the various points discussed, and
I should like, therefore, to add the following
observations:—
1 . Search for Novelty .—There was a general con
currence that such a search should be made as com
plete as possible; and my contention is, that this,
search should be made at the time, when the invention
is first thought of, so as to save the inventor the
time, trouble, and expense of drawing up a useless
specification.
I also think that the self-reliance of the inventor