“That in all Patents hereafter to be granted a proviso shall be inserted to the effect that the Crown shall have the power to use any invention therein patented without previous licence or consent of the patentee, subject to payment of a sum to be fixed by the Treasury.
“While, in the judgment of the Commissioners, the changes above suggested will do something to mitigate the inconveniences now generally complained of by the public as incident to the working of the Patent-Law, it is their opinion that these inconveniences cannot be wholly removed. They are, in their belief, inherent in the nature of a Patent-Law, and must be considered as the price which the public consents to pay for the existence of such a law.”
This is signed by Lord Stanley, Lord Overstone, Sir W. Erle, Lord Hatherley, Lord Cairns, H. Waddington, W. R. Grove, W. E. Forster, Wm. Fairbairn.
The public understood this to mean that the Commission were by no means satisfied that there should be any longer any Patent-Law at all. The Journal of Jurisprudence gives it this interpretation.
But I can adduce a higher and more authoritative exposition with regard to the views of at least the noble Lord the Chairman of the Commission. When the question was put as to legislation in conformity with the Report, Lord Stanley told this House on June 10, 1865:—
“The House ought first to have an opportunity fairly and deliberately of deciding upon that larger question which had not been submitted to the Patent-Law Commission—viz., whether it was expedient that Patents for invention should continue to be a part of the law.”
We all know there is in general society, and even among politicians and men in business, an acquiescence almost amounting to approval of Patents in the abstract. Its existence I attribute to unacquaintance with actualities. I acknowledge that when the more able advocates of the system state their reasons, these look conclusive enough, and would be so if there were but one side of the case. What we, their opponents, claim is that our objections be met. This, I apprehend, cannot be done without, at least, leaving so much inevitable evil confessed as must turn the scale. Some of these arguments that we hear are futile and far-fetched enough to deserve to be repeated. Admitting obstructiveness, a Chancery-lane writer pleads thus:—
“This very prohibition causes others to exert themselves to invent different means by which the same or a better result may be obtained than by the invention which they are prevented from using, except by payment, and the result is competition, in the highest degree beneficial to trade, and an unceasing advancement and striving.”
Really no better is the reasoning of an official witness, who told the Commission:—