“I was informed lately of a case in the North of England where a successful patentee produced a machine at the cost of £200 for working in the linen trade. On this machine his royalty is £1,000.”
I may give one instance from my own experience, where the pretensions of the applicant for a Patent were equal to about a farthing a pound on all the sugar that the process perfected. The House may understand the hardship this would inflict on the population when told that it was for the use of a single process only, or rather of a machine invented by another, an engineer firm, who had overlooked, and not included in their Patent, its applicability to sugar. My experience in that case was very instructive. Pardon my introducing a few particulars. I have no reason to think the idea of applying the machine to the refining of sugar was original; on the contrary, it had been already made practical on the Continent. Nor was the idea patented by my friend alone; on the contrary, to several persons it had occurred, by some (I forget how many) it had been patented. One of my partners and I had a good deal of travelling in England and Scotland, when we discovered the first patentee of the application at length. We traced the indubitable priority home to a good neighbour, whose office was within a bow-shot of a sugar-house of which I myself was managing partner. He told me, when I called about his Patent, that he had not attended to it for years. I regret to be able to add that he was afterwards led, by representations which I will not characterise, to part with his privilege—it was really a very valuable one—for a most inadequate consideration, to a person who had applied for a parasitical Patent for something, the value of which could not be substantiated. Perhaps the worst of all is, that the really most meritorious person, the patentee of the machine, got comparatively little advantage from its new but natural application. A coalition was formed whose terms violated one of the conditions to which I have called attention, by charging an exorbitant price for the machines, and, what is the greatest mischief of Patents as now administered, by further charging high royalties proportioned to the quantity of work they did.
Now will the House consider why it subjects the nation to all this inconvenience, loss, and expense? It is not because without it we would miss many important inventions. The groundlessness of such a fear has already been indicated with sufficient plainness.
The House can hardly doubt, from its individual acquaintance with what goes on in the world, and from the extracts I have troubled it with, that whatever argument in favour of maintaining a Patent system may be founded on the claims of inventors, the material interests of the nation would suffer little from the cessation of Patents as a stimulus. Unquestionably, if the system induces some inventions to be made and published, it deters others. What we gain is a matter of doubt. That much inconvenience is inflicted by it, and much disadvantage and very heavy burdens, is no matter of doubt. It is a case in which we have to balance the positive disadvantages against the supposed advantages. To enable the House to weigh these, by seeing how few inventions we would lose by total abolition, a few more quotations may be permitted.
Very significantly Mr. Richard Roberts answers:—
“Would the absence of Patents for inventions, in your judgment, have any effect in producing secret trades; or have you had any opportunity of judging whether non-patented inventions are used much in secret trade?—I do not think there is much secret trade, but I know this, that no trade can be kept secret long; a quart of ale will do wonders in that way.”
Let me adduce Mr. Woodcroft:—
“Do you think there is any natural tendency or propensity in inventors to keep to themselves their inventions, or have they a natural tendency to make them known?—The natural tendency of an inventive mind is to make the invention known.”
I now adduce the late able Mr. Fairrie:—
“You believe that the same energy of mind would be displayed, and the same anxiety to make new discoveries felt, whether there were this hope of protection or not?—I think so; in the case of manufacturers certainly. I think the great bulk of improvements proceed from the manufacturers themselves, and not from mere inventors.”