THE INVENTORS' INSTITUTE.
The twenty-second session of the Inventors' Institute was opened on October 27, the chair being taken by Vice-Admiral J.H. Selwyn, one of the vice-presidents, at the rooms of the institute, Lonsdale Chambers, 27 Chancery Lane, London. The chairman, in delivering the inaugural address, said that in the absence of their president, the Duke of Manchester, it became his duty to open the session of 1885. The institute having been established in 1862, this was their twenty-second anniversary. At the time of its establishment a greater number of members were rapidly enrolled than they could now reckon, although a large number had joined since the commencement of the present year. In 1862 a considerable amount of enthusiasm on the part of inventors had arisen, from the fact that at that time the leading journals had advocated the views of certain manufacturers as to sweeping away the patent laws, enacted anew in 1852, and with them the sole protection of the inventive talent and industry of the nation. This naturally caused much excitement and interest among those chiefly concerned, and a very numerous body of gentlemen associated themselves together and formed an institute for the purpose mainly of resisting the aggression and inculcating views more in accordance with true principles, as well as for explaining what were the true relations of inventive genius to the welfare of the state. He hoped to be able to show strong reasons for this action, and for energetically following it up in the future. Although on that evening there were many visitors present besides the members of the institute, yet he thought the subject could be shown to be of such national importance that it might justly engage the attention of any assembly of Englishmen, to whatever mode of thought they might belong. The institute had persistently done its work ever since its formation. Sometimes it had failed to make itself heard, at others it had been more successful in so doing; but the net result of its labors—and he did not fear to claim it as mainly due to those labors—had been to propagate and spread abroad a fact and a feeling entirely opposed to the false doctrines previously current on the subject, namely, that among our most valuable laws were those which could excite the intelligence and reward the labors of the inventors of all nations. There were still those who wished to see the patent laws swept away, but their numbers had dwindled into a miserable minority, composed mainly of manufacturers who were so curiously short-sighted as not to see that all improvement in manufactures must come from inventive talent, or those who, still more blind, could not perceive that property created by brains was certainly not a monopoly, and deserves protection quite as much as any other form of possession, in order that it may be developed by capital. He need scarcely waste time in pointing out the fallacy of refusing to pay for the seed corn of industrial pursuits, for that fallacy, bit by bit, had been completely swept away, and last year the labors of the institute had been so far crowned with success that the President of the Board of Trade, in his place in Parliament, announced his conviction that "inventors were the creators of trade, and ought to be encouraged and not repressed." Such a conviction, forced home in such a quarter, ought to have produced a great and beneficial change in the legislation on the subject, and the hopes of inventors were that this would surely be the case; but when the bill appeared these hopes were considerably depressed, and now, after a year's experience of the working of the changed law, scarcely any benefit appears to have been obtained, beyond the meager concession that the heavy payments demanded, for an English patent may be made in installments instead of lump sums. Against this infinitesimal concession had to be set a number of disabilities which did not formerly exist, such as compulsory licenses, which disinclined the capitalist to invest in inventions, attempts to assimilate the provisional specification to the complete, or to restrict the latter within the terms of the former, attempts to separate the parts of an invention, and thus increase the number of patents required to protect it, and many other minor annoyances which would take too much time to explain fully. It was true that there was some extension of the time for payment—some such locus penitentiæ as would be accorded to any debtor by any creditor in the hope of getting the assets; but the promised spirit of encouragement to inventors was not to be found in the bill; it was still a boon which must be earnestly sought by the institute.
He had said that the concessions granted were almost infinitesimal, yet a result had been obtained, surprisingly confirmatory of the views always advocated by the institute as to the potentiality of the inventive talent of this nation were it released from its shackles. While in former years the highest number of patents taken out had slowly risen to the number of five to six thousand per annum, in the year now expiring it had bounded to more than three times five thousand—had at one leap reached an equality with the patents of the United States, where only £4 ($20) was paid for a patent for seventeen years, instead of £175, as in Great Britain, for a term of fourteen years. If in the future we could hope to persuade the legislators to be content with no heavier tax than in the United States had yielded a heavy surplus over expenses of a well-conducted Patent Office, he did not fear to assert that the number of patents taken out in this country would again be trebled, and that trade and industry would be correspondingly animated and developed. The result of the wiser patent law of the United States had been to flood our markets with well-manufactured yet cheap articles from that country which might have been equally well made by our artisans at home had invention not been subject to such heavy restrictions, and had technical skill been equally sure of its reward.
The business of the institute in the future was not to rest satisfied with the proposition of Mr. Chamberlain, but to lead him or his successors forward by logical and legitimate means toward the necessary corollary of that proposition. If inventors were indeed the creators of trade, then the President of the Board of Trade was bound to see, not only that they were not prevented from creating trade, but that they received every facility in performing their work. Hence all exertions should be used to convince the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a less tax may produce a greater income: to persuade the legal authorities that this description of property, of all others, most deserves the protection of the law. Inherited direct from the Giver of all good gifts, no person had been dispossessed of anything he previously owned, and the wealth of humanity might be indefinitely increased by means of it. Not many mighty, not many noble, received this gift, but it was the inexhaustible heritage of the humble, it was the rich reward of the intelligent of all races that peopled the earth. To whomsoever given, this gift was intended to contribute to the health and the wealth of the human race, for the bringing into existence new products, for their utilization for the encouragement of the general intelligence of the nations, and for the lightening of the burdens of the poor. It would also cause technical education to be more highly valued as a means to an end—for true inventive genius was never so likely to succeed as when it passed from the summit of the known to the confines of the possible, when, having learnt and appreciated what predecessors had accomplished, it went earnestly to work to solve the next problem, to remove the next obstacle on the path which to them had proved insurmountable.
More beneficial than any other change whatever in our legislation would be a full and cordial recognition, a complete and efficient protection, of property created by thought. Then the humblest individual in the land might have confidence that he could call into existence property not inferior in value to that of the richest landowner, the most successful merchant, or the most wealthy manufacturer, in the whole world. As an instance of this Admiral Selwyn mentioned two prominent cases arising out of the pursuit of two widely differing branches of knowledge, in the one case by an outsider, in the other by a specialist. He referred to Sir H. Bessemer, one of his valued colleagues in the vice-presidency of the institute, and Mr. Perkins, the discoverer of aniline dyes. In each of these instances, whatever might have been the results to the inventors, and he hoped they had been satisfactory, a sum which might be estimated at twenty millions sterling annually, constantly on the increase, and never before existing, had been added to the income-tax-paying wealth of the country. With such a result arising from the development of only two inventions, he thought it would be seen that he must be a most ignorant, foolish, or obstinate Chancellor of the Exchequer who would refuse to allow such property to be created by requiring heavy preliminary payments, or in any way discourage or fail to encourage to the utmost of his power the creation of property which was capable of producing such a result—a result which he would in vain seek for did he rely on landed property alone, since this, in the hands of whomsoever it might be, never could largely increase in extent, and was subject at this moment to serious depreciation in tax-paying power.
The exertion of intelligence, combined with a sense of security in its pecuniary results, was in itself opposed to loose notions of proprietary rights, and tended to diminish that coveting of neighbors' goods which was the fertile source of vice and crime, and which was capable of breaking down the strongest and most wealthy community if indulged, till at last society was resolved into its elements, and when nothing else was left as property, man, the savage, coveted the scalp of his fellow man, and triumphed over a lock of hair torn from his bleeding skull.
Invention was an ennobling pursuit, and was, even among those who were not also handworkers, a means of employment which never left dull or idle hours, while to the handworker it meant more, for it offered the most ready means of rising among his fellows, and, where invention received proper protection, of securing a competence for old age or ill health. Not only, as he had before said, did the results of invention cause no loss to any other individual, unless by displacing inferior methods of working, but in most instances some distinct benefit arose to the whole human race, and unless this was the case the patented invention failed to obtain recognition, soon died out, and left the field clear for others to occupy.
He regretted that so few results had been obtained from the Patent Bill of last year, but he would briefly refer to some of the changes thought desirable by inventors and by the council of the institute.
No one could deem it desirable, it could scarcely be thought reasonable, that an Englishman who was called upon to pay in the United States £7 for a valid patent for seventeen years should be still obliged in his own country to pay £175 for a less term of a patent which does not convey anything but a right to go to law. It was also not reasonable to pretend by a deed to convey a proprietary right while reserving the power to grant compulsory licenses, which must tend to destroy the value of such proprietary right.
It was a reproach to legislative perspicacity that the grantee of a patent should be obliged to accept the view of the state, the grantor, as to the value of the invention to the nation, and also that any other method of proceeding to upset a patent, once granted, should be allowed than a suit for revocation to the crown, on the ground of error, such revocation if obtained not to prejudice the granting anew, with the old date, of a valid patent for the parts of the invention which are not proved to be anticipated at the trial. There are many other points which could not be referred to on the present occasion, but he might say that the duty of the council would be to press them forward until the capitalist could consider patented property at least as sound an investment as any other. So might the wealth of the nation be largely increased, and the sense of justice between man and man be more fully inculcated. In the United States inventors were able at once to secure the favorable attention of capitalists, because there the whole business of the Patent Office was to assist the inventor to obtain a valid—and, as far as possible, an indisputable—patent.