THE PROTECTION OF SCIENCE BY PATENT 55 5 



is fatal to the validity of the patent which may be issued as a 

 consequence of the subsequent application. The first exception 

 is where publication is unauthorised, and the second where the 

 publication is due directly to the inventor. The suggested 

 reform, which would permit an inventor who had published the 

 result of his investigations before a learned society to apply at a 

 later date for a patent and receive a valid grant, would not only 

 do no violence to the law as it now stands, but would be the 

 natural complement to the steps which have already been taken. 

 This demand for alteration of the law is, however, no new thing. 

 Prof. Sylvanus Thompson, F.R.S., lent his powerful advocacy, 

 but without avail, towards securing amendment on these lines 

 while the Patents Bill was before Parliament; while in the 

 United States the patent law from the commencement has 

 allowed an inventor, during a period of two years before 

 making a formal application for a patent, to publish his inven- 

 tion freely without detriment to himself. 



Doubtless there are several methods by which this improve- 

 ment in the law might be brought about. One method of so 

 doing would be to grant the inventor in the case under dis- 

 cussion what in the Patents Act is technically termed " Pro- 

 visional protection." By the reading of a paper before a learned 

 society and an application for a patent being made within a 

 specified time, say two or five years, together with the simul- 

 taneous deposit of a " complete specification," provisional 

 protection might be conferred and antedated to the date of the 

 reading of the paper. Complementary provisions of a simple and 

 practical nature would also be required, so as to restrict the 

 benefits to those for whom they were intended. By the con- 

 ferring of provisional protection upon the inventor ipso facto by 

 the reading of his paper, the patent to be subsequently received 

 would bear the date of the reading and nominally there would 

 be no publication before the date which the subsequently 

 acquired patent bore. The inventor would hold the field during 

 the period of two or five years, or whatever time might be 

 provided, against everybody, and in particular against the mere 

 snapper-up of a good idea who conceived some slight improve- 

 ment or further step in advance and patented it, an advance 

 which after all might be but little removed from the obvious 

 and which was naturally within the ability of the originator of 

 the main idea to produce. 



