PROTECTION OF PATENTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 5199, 13 February 1904, Page 7

PROTECTION OF PATENTS.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—lt will doubtless be of interest to a large proportion of your readers, and especially to that portion who are interested in inventions, to learn that it is now possible to file applications for patents for inventions to cover tho whole Australian Commonwealth. Up to the present it has been necessary, in order to fully protect an invention in Australia, to make separate applications in each of tho sin States composing the Commonweal tii with a consequent heavy monetary outlay. A Federal Patent Act to provide for the granting of patents was passed last year and tills Act is to come into force on a date to be detormiued and proclaimed. Section 29 of the Act, however, provides for the filing of patent applications as soon as a, Commissioner of Patents has been appointed, such appliciv tions being received by the Commissioner and given priority in the order of their filing, although they will not he taken up for examination. nor will patents he issued upon them until after the Act comes into force. All patents upon applications so filed will bear date as of the date of commencement of the Act. The section also provides that all applications filed under it shall have tho like eifeet as if lodged after the commencement of the Act, thus ensuring that any publication or sale of tho invention tlict might take place between the filing of the application and tho date of tho patent shall not invalidate the patent afterwards obtained. A Commissioner of'Patents has now been appointed in the person of Mr G. Town send, late Registrar of Patents in Queensland, who has issued the necessary regulations to bring the section into force. N£w Zealand inventors may thus take advantage of the provisions and protect their inventions in Australia without delay', tho cost of such application being about one-fourth of tho charges previously made for tho sis States. HENRY HUGHES.