A Good Illustration and Bad Argument.
However absurd it may appear, a valid Patent has been for fourteen years granted, which gave a monopoly to one person to make all the pins for all our railways. I should have thought that the use of wooden trenails to fasten materials together, to have been of ancient date, but for this Patent. That existing Patent-rights are, to some extent, obstructive to the “right of way,” is just as true as that the right to enclose common land is so. The natural remedy, in both instances, is to reserve “a right of way” to the public, not necessarily a free right, but one open to all, on payment of a reasonable toll in the latter, and of a reasonable royalty in the former case. With more show of justice, might the enclosure of common lands be prohibited than Patent-rights for inventions be refused, for the common lands were not only discovered, but in human use before enclosure, which is more than can be said of any true invention.—Extract from “English Mechanic,” July 2, 1869.