He goes in the face of the strongest evidence when he says—
It is doubtful even if these objectionable Patents do any real harm. An invention which will answer no purpose is simply useless, whether it be patented or not.
And, elsewhere,
The truth must not be blinked that, if a multiplicity of worthless Patents be an evil, if the profits of manufacturers are diminished owing to the battle they have to fight with patentees, if the bestowal of Patent-right be the source of mischief and the occasion of pecuniary loss, the like complaint may be laid at the door of Copyright, and its abolition might be demanded with as great a show of fairness.
How lightly he can regard arguments of his opponents is also seen in the following passage:—
Another of Lord Stanley’s objections is that the right man hardly ever gets the reward. As he puts it, litigation being costly, and the grant of Patent-right merely amounting to permission to take legal proceedings against infringers, the poor man has no chance of asserting and defending his rights. “If a poor inventor took out a Patent, and the Patent promised to be productive, in nine cases out of ten he was obliged to sell it to some one who could command capital enough to defend it in a court of law.” We submit this proves nothing more than that the poor inventor, in nine cases out of ten, deserves our pity. But then, if these nine inventors are unfortunate, that does not justify the ill-treatment of the tenth.
The source of the writer’s idea, that cessation of Patents is ill-treatment, lies in the assumption which pervades the whole article, that to inventors belongs property in inventions—i.e., exclusive right of property; or, in other words, right to require the State to use its power to prevent other persons from doing what they do, and what every other man has a natural and inalienable right to do.
Still further: shutting his eyes to the difficulty of mollifying the grievance of invention monopoly by means of “compulsory licences,” which the Royal Commission declared they found no way of rendering practicable—and, I add, if practicable, would be no cure of the evils, which are radical—he writes—
If to this were added a system of compulsory licences, the amount of royalty to be determined by a tribunal, in the event of the parties failing to come to terms, nearly all the really serious and valid objections to the working of a Patent-Law would be obviated.