The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." SATURDAY, AUGUST 16th, 1902. PROTECTING INVENTORS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11713, 16 August 1902, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." SATURDAY, AUGUST 16th, 1902. PROTECTING INVENTORS.

It has. for years been a standing complaint that the patent law of England has been behind the times. There appears now to be a prospect of a much desired improvement being brcjught abouifc. When the mail, which reached here this week, left England, a new Patent Bill had been real a second time in the House of Commons. This Bill is the- outcome of a Committed appointed more than two years 'ago by the Board of Trade to inquire into the working of tiie Patent Acts in regard, to certain specified questions, Thel Bill, though ;» short one, is far-reaching in its effects. Ait the present time the protection afforded to the inventor «t Home is in some z-esipeets a misnomer, for it is possible to secure a patent for an invention already patented. Recognising this, Mr R; Randal Phillips, the editotr of the "Builders' Journal,' giv~s to the reader* of the "Daily Mail" his ideas as to what, th© iiesy BJU will do towards remedying this and other evils.. lla points out that all that the. Patent Office now require*! is that, the applicant shall fil 1 iv a few form?—declaring himself to be the time inventor, and so forth—and pay the necessary fees. "Provisional protection" (for which a, £1 stamp is needed) is given on tho pi eliiniuary-.specification, and it lasts nine months ; that >s to say. the inventor has nine months in which'to- test or improve his invention. During that time, for instance, lie may lay it before manufacturers without the risk which he might incur »f bjs invention were not. "protected." At the end of jibe nine months the g-ant-lapses, bo* in ithe meantime, should he desire to do so, the inventor may apply for a full "Letters Patent," which costs £4 and lasts fourteen years, subject to the payment of animal renewal fees.. To secure i patent it has hitherto heau largely a matter of formality and fees, but a vevy notable change will be effected by the new Act.— the Patent Act of 1902. Three question." were set before the Committee already mentioned. The first and most important was whufcher any additional powers should .Oe given to the .Paiteuiti Office to control jr otherwise limit the issue of letters patent in respect of inventions which were "obviously old" or wliich had already been patented in this country. Asi the result of tie Committee's affirmative reply to this question, the new Bill' stipulates that in addition; to. the-usual procedure tfi& Patent

Office is to make a. further investigation far the purpose off ascertaining whether the invention claimed has. been wholly or in part claimed or described in aaiy of the specifications of the last fifty years. If the examiner finds that the invention has been anticipated, he will inform the applicant, who, should he desirel to do so, can file an r.mendede specification, which will be similarly investigated; the particular point to be noticed is, however, that if the inventor refuses to alter his specification as re- j quested, the Comptroller has power to en-1 dorse it with references to those prior patent* which he considers have anticipated | the applicant's; thus the patent goes out branded. If the Comptroller is satisfied j that the claim is in order, he will accept tho specification, and the matter will be I completed in the usual manner. As might | be expected this preliminary work will increase the work of the Patent Office considerably ; but when it is seen what a quantity of rubbish is annually deposited there by inventor*, the need of some kind of j Weeding-out process will be evident. It is interesting to note in this connection that, with a view to ascertaining approximately the number of inventions which were "obviously old" or had already been patented i in this country, the Patent Office was aslcci by the Board of Trade Committee to ex- i amine all the complete specifications ac-' cepted during the first week in June in each of the three years 18S7, 1898, and 189S, i and it was founl that about 59 per cent, hal been wholly covered by previous patents, about 35 per cent, had been practically anticipated in the same way, and 0.29 were "obviously old" ; so that 41 per cent., or nearly one-half, of the inventions had been wholly or partly patented already. It is therefore high time that the issue of such faulty patents should be stopped Though this Act will improve things, thea-e are still several unsatisfactory features in the patent law of this country. Maybe the German and American systems, ideal in conception but not so in practice, are undesired here; yet the number of useless patents which are annually issued makes one wish for something, better. Two kinds of protection are needed—that for the inventor, who shall be protected, against "patent sharks," and that for the public, who shall bo protected against the issue of old and useless patents. Under the new Bi.l an applicant can claim a pat emit even though lias invention may have been anticipated, and it is doubtful whether the official notification of that fact on the specification will be so damaging as might at first be supposed, for a "patent" could be sold without tlie buyer 'having seen the specification. Again, t-h'o proposal to* object'to inventions which have been "wholly or in part" claimed by previous, specifications is a mistake, as ft has been settled in the courts that the anticipation must be complete, because no* man should be deprived of his patent because some one has partially exploited the idea in a previous specification. As. regards the general question, Mi1 Phillips says it is painfully cvi dent that inventoi^s. themselves need reforming. A gi-Cciit many of them are victims of the belief that it is the small inventions which bring ■fortune, a belief fostered by the indiscriminate circulation of stories about Blakey's boot protector, which produced £20,000, the fortunes derived from "Dancing Jim Crow," the rubber tip on the end of a pencil, and the rest of these familiar example's. But there never was a more mistaken belief. Good inventions are generally tihe result of careful study and knowledge of what* has already been done, not the intested ideas otf cranks; and. moreover, the grant of a. patent is not the key to fortune, for there is often as much difficulty in selling an invention as in devising it. The chief feature of the Bill is the examination among the specifications of the lasb fifty years, but- another very important matter dealt with is that affecting compulsory licenses. A man may take out a patent, say, in Germany, manufacture his goods there, ship them over to England absolutely duty free., and have a British paten* for the same thing all the time, simply to prevent competition. The German thus gets everything. But if an Englishman patents an invention in his own country he cannot, export it to Germany without forfeiting his foreign patent rights, j and, in addition, he has to pay a heavy import, duty. This is what the various Chambers of Commerce have objected to, and as a result of their petitions Mr Balfour has sa modified Clause 2 of this new Patents Bill that if any new industry is prejudiced by {lie failure of the patentee to work Ms patent at Home, or to grant licenses, ho may be compelled to do so1 by the court, oi" have his patent, revoked. This is a very reasonable compromise between extreme views and one likely to work well, especially with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council «s the tribunal, with no appeal. The minor featau'es of the Bill are that tiie time -elapsing between a de posit of ai provisional and a complete specificatioiii is reduced from nine to six month? (tluH ion account of the examination), and the stamp fee increased £1, thus making it £.5. But because these simple facts are not .widely appreciated, out of the 30,000 aip-, plications which annually reach the Patent Office a goodly number .come from persons who tliink that they have only toi invent an unstopperable bottle, or some trifle for the cook, or the bsby\ or the bath—and, behold.. Fortune rises to the summons. To this, hotwever. there h ai rude awakening, and just as it is sometimes kinid to put a fly out of misery,, so tlie new Patent Office will be sternly sympathetic in nipping these schemes in the bud, and so save their inventors from wasting brains and money on ideas which have already been elaborated.