In our day, when export trade excites so great an interest among all manufacturing nations, and has so much influence on the prosperity of internal commerce, M. Michel Chevalier believes that the observation he is about to make ought to be taken into serious consideration. At least it follows, according to him, that before approving and continuing the present system of Patents, it would be necessary that they should be subjected to uniform legislation in every country. Now there are manufacturing nations—Switzerland, for instance—which absolutely refuse; there are others where Patents are subjected to so many restrictions that it is as if they did not exist; such is Prussia.
From the point of view of the right of property, it is contended that Patent-right should be respected, since it only assures property in invention in the interest of him to whom the community is debtor. M. Michel Chevalier sees in this argument only a semblance of the truth. We must first inquire whether an idea may really constitute an individual property—that is, exclusive personal property. This pretension is more than broached. A field or a house, a coat, a loaf, a bank-note, or credit opened at a banker’s, readily comply with individual appropriation, and can hardly even be otherwise conceived of; they must belong to an individual or to a certain fixed number of persons; but an idea may belong to any number of persons—it is even of the essence of an idea that once enunciated, it belongs to every one.
Besides, is it certain that the greater part of patentees have had an idea of their own, and that they have discovered anything which deserves this name? Of the great majority of patentees this may be doubted, for various reasons.
The law does not impose on the individual who applies for a Patent the obligation of proving that he is really the inventor. Whoever has taken out a Patent may very easily turn it against the real inventor; this has occurred more than once.
Besides, the law lays it down as a principle that it is not an idea that is patented, and constitutes the invention valid; and thus it excludes from the benefit of patenting the savants who make the discoveries, of which Patents are only the application.
It is by the advancement of human knowledge that manufactures are perfected, and the advancement of human knowledge is due to savants. These are the men prolific in ideas; it is they who ought to be rewarded, if it were possible, and not the patentees, who are most frequently only their plagiarists.
M. Michel Chevalier does not desire systematically to depreciate patentees. Among them there are certainly many honourable men. The inventions, real or pretended, which they have patented are supposed to be new and ingenious uses or arrangements [dispositions], by help of which we put in practice some one or more specialities of manufacture; true discoveries are always due to the savants. But in general these arrangements, represented as new, have no novelty.
In the detailed treatises on Mechanics, Physics, and Chemistry, in books of technology, with their accompanying illustrations, such as are now published, we find an indefinite quantity of combinations of elementary apparatus, especially of mechanical arrangements, and very often the work of professional patentees consists in searching through these so numerous collections for uses and arrangements, which they combine and group. What right of property is there in all this, at least in the greater number of cases?
Against the pretended right of property alleged by the defenders of Patents there will be much more to say. There exists in the greater number of cases much uncertainty about the inventors, even when true and important discoveries are in question. Is it known with certainty who invented the steam-engine, who invented the aniline dyes, or photography, even? Different nations are at variance on these points, as formerly they were on the birthplace of Homer. The fact is, that the majority of inventions are due to the combined working [collaboration] of many men separated by space, separated by great intervals of time.
On this subject M. Michel Chevalier repeats what he heard from an eminent man who was Minister of Finance at the time when Daguerre received the national recompense which had been awarded him with the acclamations of all France. One of the Government clerks brought to this eminent personage proof that he too had made the same invention; and also there were the labours of M. Niepce de Saint Victor, analogous to those of M. Daguerre.