“If he has not the power either of keeping those improvements perfectly secret, or of securing them to himself by Patent, then the War-office authorities are placed in the position of having in all probability to pay private individuals for inventions or improvements actually made by their own officers.”
Next Mr. Abel, F.R.S., Head Chemist to the War Department:—
“In your experimental inquiries, when you have happened to fall upon any discovery, you have not been much annoyed by claimants saying that they have had precedence of you?—Not at all, and it is to that that I referred in my first answer. We do not meet practically with those embarrassments during experiments, but we may meet with them in applying the details of improvements. For instance, I am at present engaged upon the working out of the application of gun cotton, the whole details of which application were communicated as a great secret to this Government by the Austrian Government.... While every care was taken by this Government to keep them secret, a Patent was taken out in this country for the whole improved process of the manufacture.”
Mr. Clode again:—
“Some time after I commenced these experiments, while they remained a perfect secret, and while every care was taken by this Government to keep them secret, a Patent was taken out in this country for the whole improved process of the manufacture.... One of them who is present is experimenting upon gun cotton, but it is with him a matter of extreme embarrassment to know how to deal with the subject; if he discloses by way of specification all that he knows, he sends the invention or discovery he has made away to the winds—the very night that it is put upon the file it goes to Paris, Dresden, Berlin, and elsewhere. If he does not do that, he is afraid that some man will find out precisely what he has in view, and put a Patent on the file, and tax the Government in that way. So that we are upon the horns of a dilemma.”
If I were now to stop, and say not a word more, I might trust to the candour of the House for an admission that the case against Patents is proved, on the ground that the conditions of the Statute of Monopolies have been systematically violated, these violations being of the very texture and vitals of the institution.
But I proceed. If the House permit, I will now advert to the new phases the question has assumed since the inauguration of free trade, understanding by that term le libre échange, and not la liberte du travail.
The pernicious effect of home Patents on trade with our Indian empire, is stated thus by Mr. Rendel, in 1851:—
“As engineer to the East India Railway, we had a little inconvenience the other day; we wanted to manufacture articles patented in this country, and we would have had to pay Patent-rights; it was a question whether we had not better buy the iron in India, and avoid the Patent-rights. Those cases, I think, are constantly occurring. The Patent-Laws not being applicable to India, people will not unfrequently order things to be manufactured in India to avoid the licence dues in this country; and the consequence was that I made an arrangement with the patentees at about one-half of the ordinary charge for the Patent in this country.”