I am aware that to persuade Government and Parliament to adopt national grants would involve indefinite, perhaps long, postponement of the happy year of release. Therefore I repeat another proposition, also already submitted to you. It is this: To grant Patents much as heretofore (not resisting any reformation that may appear expedient); but to enact that, on the demand of any manufacturer, after three years of monopoly, any invention may be valued—not, of course, on the basis of the return which it might bring—but on that of its originality, the cost incurred in working it out, its advantage, &c., whereupon it shall be lawful for a Patent Board to extinguish the grant in any of the following circumstances: 1. If the patentee’s books (which he should be obliged to keep in all cases where his fees from any individual exceed £100 per annum) show that he has already received in fees the valuation price. 2. If manufacturers and others interested unitedly pay as much as will make the price up. 3. If the State pay the remainder of the price, purchasing the invention for the nation. And I would include a condition that any one may obtain exemption for himself or his firm, by paying, say, a tenth of the price.
And now, a kind word to the amphibious class of persons whom we style inventors (we are most of us inventors, more or less, in some form or other). Try to meet the legitimate demands of manufacturers; act in consonance with the spirit of the age and the requirements of the time; and remember how, by resisting conciliatory propositions, the great agricultural, sugar-producing, and shipowning interests had to succumb to enlightened doctrines, and accept a settlement far less accordant with their pretensions. Manufacturers (with whom, as in like manner liable to be affected, I class miners, farmers, shipowners, &c.) who employ inventions in their businesses on a right system, ought not to regard the patentee, still less the inventor, as an intruder and an obstacle in his path. Yet that they in general do so regard these reputed benefactors and auxiliaries is, I fear, too true. It is the fault of the system. Let us be well disposed to a better, in which the interests and feelings of both sides—for opposite sides they appear to be—shall harmonise. Either of the plans I sketch would, partially at least, bring them into unison. The only objection that I anticipate is that the amount to be received will not reach the often, it must be admitted, extremely high ideas of inventors. In so far as this objection is well founded, in consequence of the rare merit of any particular invention—a case that does not arise every year—it can be met by special votes, which I would be far from excluding.
It may be regretted that the investigations of the recent Royal Commission to inquire into this subject (most significant against the present system is their report) were not more extensive and radical. This arose from the purposely defective terms of appointment. The Liverpool Chamber of Commerce has consequently asked Government, through the Board of Trade (that department calculated to be so very useful, but somehow in these days jostled aside, and scarcely seen or heard of in deeds), to appoint a fresh commission which shall inquire into the policy of Patents. This request has had the honour of public endorsement (either in that form or in the form of a Parliamentary Committee) by no less an authority than the Right Hon. Chairman of the Commission, who also stated to the House the remarkable and most encouraging fact, that doubts like his own had sprung up in the mind of that eminent lawyer, Sir Hugh Cairns, the very member who, almost in opposition to the late Mr. Ricardo, a decided opponent of the monopoly, moved the address to the Crown for the Commission. On the other side of the Speaker’s chair we have law officers of the Crown, if I mistake not, impressed with the same dislike, and among the Radicals we know that equally opposed were Mr. Bright and the late pure and noble patriot Mr. Cobden. It is within my own observation that candid inquirers, preimpressed though they may be in favour of inventors’ claims and monopolies, reach the same conclusion. As to the Continent, M. Chevalier, Swiss statesmen officially consulted, and the German Congress of Political Economists, have strongly declared that they are utterly opposed. The Social Science Association can, and I hope will, as in the past so in the future, lend important aid to the cause. Nobody is better fitted to reconcile those interests that unnecessarily conflict, and to emancipate productive industry from trammels so hard to bear, while also promoting invention.
The reader is also referred to the following lapsed
Scheme submitted to the International Association for the Progress of the Social Sciences at Brussels in 1863.
1. The principal States of Europe and America, with their colonies, to unite and form a Patent Union.
2. Every capital to have a State Patent-office, in correspondence with the offices in the other capitals.
3. Every invention patented in one of these offices to be protected in all the associated States.
4. Each State’s Patent-office to receive copies of Patent specifications lodged in the Patent-office of every other State, and to translate and publish within its own territories.