PATENT RIGHTS AND PATENT WRONGS.
Sir,—On page 279, in speaking of steel rails, you say: “Could a better result than that achieved by Mr. Bessemer, and by those who hold licences under him, have been arrived at under the ‘No-Patent’ system?” Decidedly not, for it has landed them in wealth; but I will suppose a by no means improbable case. Suppose Belgian manufacturers had secured Patent-rights in England, and demanded a royalty preventing English manufacturers from selling their steel rails, as you state, under 12l. per ton, when without such royalty they could be sold at 9l. per ton. Now, the case would stand thus: the Belgian manufacturers could be supplying the world with steel rails at 9l. per ton, while the English manufacturers were prevented by their own laws for fourteen years from manufacturing them under 12l. per ton, although all the materials were lying at their doors, and both masters and men wanting the work. If England wishes to maintain her position in the trading and manufacturing world, monopolies and prejudice must be things of the past....
You will say the inventor has a right to the invention. Granted; there were no laws to prevent him from finding it out, and getting all the advantage he could out of it, and there ought not then to have been a law made to prevent any one else finding out the process or improving upon it. I cannot see the right of giving anyone the power to block the public highway of thought and enterprise. Necessity is the mother of all useful inventions, and if steel rails were required, English manufacturers would have soon found out how to make them, without a Patent Law to help them.
R. R. S.
—From the English Mechanic.