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.
Growth of Strange Views among Surgeons.
A change in the views of English medical men is perceptible on the question of the propriety of a surgeon taking out a Patent for an instrument he has invented. Although we have always felt it the duty of a physician who subscribed to a fixed code of ethics to abide by its regulations, and therefore have always opposed, on technical grounds, the taking Letters Patent on improvements in surgical appliances, we freely grant that there is no à priori immorality in the act.... If we read Dr. Chapman’s letter to the British Medical Journal, we find that he there says: “I have been informed that soon after Dr. Richardson invented his ether-spray instrument, Her Majesty’s physician, Dr. Jenner, said, if he were Dr. Richardson, he would patent the instrument.” And further on we read, “Before I patented the spine bags, I consulted the President of the College of Physicians, Sir Thomas Watson, and the head of the Privy Council, Mr. Simon; and both these gentlemen expressed the opinion that I was justified in doing so.” Such quotations, in our humble opinion, show that Dr. Chapman is, in all probability, right, and the majority of the profession wrong, in objecting to his patenting an instrument which is by no means mysterious or secret. We shall not be sorry to see this frank admission gain ground with the profession in this country, and the prohibition of patenting instruments reconsidered.—Medical and Surgical Reporter.
What Preliminary Investigation Requires.
... To diminish the period for which he shall be allowed to retain his exclusive right.... If a gratuitous privilege of five years’ duration be a sufficient price for John Bull to pay inventors for inducing them to make their inventions Patent, I know no just reason why he should pay more in the form of monopoly price for that which he can purchase for the shorter term.... To enable an efficient preliminary investigation to be made with facility, either by individuals, or by the official examiners, I propose to compile a history of inventions, discoveries, and processes, for one rather more full and modern than Beckman’s would be required. I have long advocated the compilation and official publication of this great work, for it is not nearly enough for this purpose to have only a classified abridgment of the specifications of English or British Patents. In addition to this, besides all foreign Patents, a brief classified description of the million things formerly and now being done and suggested is almost absolutely necessary to enable either official or private investigators to arrive at anything like a probable resolution of the question, if a given thing it is proposed to Patent is new.—Extract from “English Mechanic,” July 9, 1869.
Hard Pushed for a Defence of Patents.
(Extract from Leading Article in “Engineer” of July 9, 1869.)
In a civilised state, we say, everything is property that is the fruit of a man’s own intellect, and if the law does not make it property, then the law, not the principle, is to blame. Advocates for the abolition of Patent-Laws consider the following as one of their most powerful arguments: They say that if inventors would restrict themselves to the initiation of inventions great and good, there might be some plea for the concession of reward through monopoly or otherwise; but the fact is otherwise. It suffices to take the most cursory glance at Patent records, they say, to be made aware that processes great and good constitute but a very small minority of those on behalf of which Patent fees are paid and the rights of monopoly claimed.
We readily grant the second clause of the statement. The number of great and good inventions, by comparison with the obviously trivial claims, is very small indeed; but we altogether fail to perceive what legitimate source of grievance this can be to the public. On the contrary, it seems to us demonstrable that under a competent system of Patent-Law organisation the fees accruing from these claims of trivial intrinsic import might be utilised and made to fructify. The surplus thus accruing might be used in diminution of existing Patent fees, in establishing a museum of inventions creditable to the nation and the epoch, and in other ways conducive to the development of invention in general.... Our own experience points to many cases like this; wherefore we are assured a proposition of some not wholly averse to Patents, whereby they would establish courts of preliminary investigation to determine whether any given process should be deemed worthy of patenting or not, would be altogether futile.
According to our way of viewing the case, the registration of inventive novelties should be encouraged on other grounds than that already specified. We hold the record of failures to be of, at least, equal importance to the record of successes. Anybody who has given much time to promote invention will, we are sure, coincide in our opinion, that the knowledge of what others have been unable to accomplish in some particular line of invention is one of the most likely conditions of his own success. This collateral value of failures does not seem to have been heeded by those who are most prominent amongst the advocates of Patent abolition. From matters of undisputed non-success, we pass now to the consideration of others confessedly of some value, but the importance of which is trivial. In respect to such it is argued by Mr. Macfie that they much embarrass the manufacturer by needlessly stopping the way until terms can be come to with the inventor. The plausibility of this reasoning we fail to see. Does not the assumed worthlessness of an invention of the series contemplated bar the need of coming to terms with the inventor at all? What manufacturer in his senses would treat for the use of an invention that he knows to be worthless—such foreknowledge being a postulate on which the argument is raised, and on which the objection turns? The national value of a readily-accessible and classified record of invention must be obvious to all. Those who would desire to uphold the Patent-Laws, and those who would wish to abolish them, must alike coincide in this point. We insist upon this part of the subject all the more strenuously from the conviction that the upholding the abrogation or modification of the Patent-Laws will turn, after all, on considerations of public expediency, not on considerations of right and wrong to individual inventors. This being so, the collateral value of Patent-Laws, in establishing a record of inventive progress, cannot be too prominently kept in view.