ENEMY-OWNED PATENTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1939, Page 8

ENEMY-OWNED PATENTS

LEGAL POSITION EXPLAINED [BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.] (Recd. October 28, 11.30 a.m.) RUGBY, October 27. Since statements have appeared to the effect that enemy-owned patents, designs, copyrights and trade-marks in Britain are being confiscated, or compulsorily transferred to non-enemies, the British Patent Office takes the opportunity both of categorically denying this charge, and of explaining the position relating to enemy-owned trade-marks, etc. What is evidently referred to in these reports is the power given by the Patents, Designs, Copyright and Trade-Marks Emergency Act for a grant, in proper cases and under a strictly-regulated procedure, to persons who are' not enemies or enemy subjects, of licenses to work patented inventions, use registered designs, or produce or perform copyright works belonging to enemies. The object of this legislation is to enable the articles or substances in question, -which cannot now be made here or supplied to this country by the enemy proprietors concerned, to be produced here. The licenses granted do not deprive the enemy owner of his property in the patent or copyright, and they will be made subject to proper conditions, including payment of royalties to the custodian of enemy property. So far as enemy-owned trade-marks are concerned, it is onlj r in comparatively rare cases, where it is difficult or impracticable to describe or refer to an article or substance without the use of an enemy-owned trade-mark, that power is given for a temporary suspension, not confiscation, of the trade-mark rights in individual cases, in favour of a person who desires to deal in the article or substance, and to establish another description for it.