THE PATENT LAWS AND THE MINISTER FOR LABOUR.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 3, 2 January 1907, Page 106

THE PATENT LAWS AND THE MINISTER FOR LABOUR.

Ab the administration, of the Patent Omce devolves upon the Minister for Justice, one wonders why the Minister foi Labour should have thought it necessary to make a pronouncement upon the Patent Laws A patent is the protection afforded by the State to an inventor to encourage his inventive faculty lhat is one of the conditions which must not be lost sight of Another set of conditions embiaces the effect of the patent upon both Capital and Labour Thus it appears that as legards the conditions surrounding the status of a patent the department of Labour is interested only remotely The patent laws, it follows, ought not to be dealt with by any one who may be regarded as holding a brief for Labour. But that is Mr. Millai's position as the Minister for Labour The Minister is reported to have said (to an interviewer at Waihi) that a patent ought within a ceitain time of sealing to be in manufactuie, either diiectly by the inventor himself or by some one to whom he h.is given a license, failing which the patent should be forfeited , and that he has an amendment on the stocks of the patent law to that effect Now the Patent Act (1889) aheady piovides for the license very clearly Section 33 is as follows — Compulsory License — "If on the petition of any person interested it is proved to the Governor that by reason of the default of a patentee to grant licenses on reasonable terms, (a) the patent is not worked in the colony , 01 (b) the reasonable requirements of the public with respect to the invention can not be supplied , or (<.) any person is prevented from working or using to the best advantage an invention of which he is possessed , the Governor may order the patentee to grant licenses on such terms as to the amount of royalties, security for payment or otherwise, as the Governor, having regard to the nature of the invention and as the circumstances of the case may seem just, and any such order may be enforced by mandamus " The Act of 1883 provided (section 22) that all patentees must " distinctly use and practise " their inventions and permitted them (subsection 4 of the same section) to grant licenses to others to do so Under the old law there was therefore a worklno- as well as a licensing condition When the law was amended m 1889 the first of these was discarded because experience had demonstrated the hardship to inventors of the principle of compulsory working In this respect New Zealand does not stand alone At the last meeting of the Inter-

national Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, held at Milan on the 14th and 15th September last, a resolution was carried advocating the abolition of the working clause in the conditions of all patents, and advising the substitution of the compulsory license system ; thus suppressing forfeiture for non-working. The Convention knew that the working clause in many instances led to technical working only, and therefore moved to lay it aside as an unnecessary tax on the inventor, while saving all interests by recommending the Compulsory license system. In Canada, the country to which the Minister for Labour is reported to have referred in support of his proposal, the requirements of the law can be met by a technical working. In the United States there is no working clause in the Patent Law ; neither is there in the law of the Australian Commonwealth, the latest enacted of all the patent laws. It may be added that the latest of the up-to-date nations, Japan, has after examination into all the patent laws of the world, adopted the American In the face of this universal experience the proposals of the Minister for Labour may be regarded as distinctly reactionary. In Canada the terms of the license are submitted to arbitration m the event of failure of the parties to agree , and it is the same with the British patent law. If the Minister were proposing to substitute the arbitration principle for the settlement by the Governor one could have understood his zeal in the matter of reform. But what he can see to recommend the return to an unnecessary and vexatious technical working, instead of the present certainty of true working whenever needful with absolute protection to all interests both of inventor and public, it is impossible to understand. There is much more to be said on this subject, but as the news of the Ministerial intention only reaches us as we are going to press, we must postpone the saying of it till next month. For the present we take the opportunity of protesting on behalf of inventors against the conclusions arrived at by the Minister, and of expressing our hope that now that his attention has been drawn to the other side of the question, which he does not appear to be at all familiar with, he will reconsider the matter in the judicial and historical spirit so necessary to a satisfactory understanding of the subject.

A Hungarian chemist has produced a fluid optical lens at a moderate cost. The largest lens used for astronomical work has hitherto cost hundreds of pounds and taken several years to produce. A few weeks time and an expenditure of is all that is now required