FROM THE “FRANKFORT JOURNAL,” JULY 21.
The abolition of the Patent-Laws in the Netherlands will, it is evident, not remain without influence on the decision which other European States, and in particular those of Germany, will form in regard to these laws. Of the two countries, one of which is in possession of the sources of the Rhine, and the other of its mouths—the former the most industrious country in the world, never had a Patent-Law; the latter, eminent for its foresight, dispenses with those laws. Through this act are intensified the unsatisfactory circumstances which the existence of these laws produces, and the want of confidence which is felt in their advantage to inventors and the public. The number of their defenders is constantly declining. People are daily more and more becoming convinced that these laws belong to the same category as the Usury-Laws and the Corn-Laws, and other similar excrescences introduced by bureaucracy, and that they should be thrown into the lumber-room of laws which effect the very reverse of what they profess to do. They stop progress. Inventions of importance can always be made useful to the inventors without Patent-Laws. Great inventors might perhaps be indemnified by Government on behalf of a nation, but as for the innumerable herd of small inventors who prosecute inventing as a trade, they cause the consumer severe injury instead of benefiting him. Since Patents for inventions in Germany do not extend to protection against dealing in foreign articles patented here, we may consider the abolition of Patents in the Netherlands a reason why Patent monomaniacs should now ask themselves whether the cost is likely hereafter to yield a good return.