My dear Sir,—.... The fact is, no one, I presume, wishes to say that an inventor is undeserving and should go unrewarded. All that the opponents of the Patent system do say is, that the present machinery gives the minimum advantage to the inventor, and inflicts the maximum disadvantage on the public. Besides, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the patentee is only a simultaneous inventor with a number of others, who lose their labour and ingenuity because one man happens to get in first....
It has always seemed to me that the weakness of the inventor’s case lies in the fact already alluded to, that he rarely is the sole inventor. Hence the fundamental distinction between Invention and Copyright, though I am no fanatical admirer of the latter privilege.
Now, if a law can confer a right on one person only by inflicting a wrong on a number of other persons, it is intrinsically vicious, and cannot be defended on the ground of its intentional goodness.
Yours faithfully,
James C. Thorold Rogers.
July 29.
REMARKS ON A RECENT ARTICLE.
The Westminster Review for July contains an article on Patents. Its proofs should have been corrected with more care. In my answer to question 1947 in the Royal Commission’s Report, the word “patented” in the following the Review misprints “neglected:”—
As a matter of fact, patentees have patented things of so little value.