THE PATENT-OFFICE ESTABLISHMENT.
The Patent-office in Southampton-buildings, Chancery-lane, is an establishment highly creditable to its organisers, but far too little known. Its free consulting library should be more frequented. The publications there sold at a cheap rate, and presented gratuitously to public institutions which undertake to keep them for reference under fitting regulations, are invaluable. The indexes, manuscript and printed, there kept, are elaborate, and include lists of scientific and practical matter affecting commerce and the arts, culled from periodicals issued in all countries. No change in our manner of dealing with inventions can deprive us of, or supersede the use of, such an accessible storehouse of useful knowledge. The wonder is, that its advantages are not more extensively availed of, and that so few even of our great towns have applied for sets of its specifications and indexes. There is, in spite of the establishment’s excellence, room for improvement in several respects, one of which is in the providing better means for connecting itself with the mass of the people in the provinces.
“The New Canadian Patent-Law.—The Patent Bill which has been for some time before the Parliament of the Dominion, has passed. The hope, to which we alluded a few weeks ago, that the Bill might be modified to enable Americans to obtain Patents in Canada, has not been fulfilled; and the only effect of the Bill, so far as we are interested, is to shut out American inventors from a larger amount of territory than before.”—Extract from “American Artisan,” June 20, 1869.