FAEMERS' INSTITUTES. 213 



REISSUES. 



Under tlie name of Beissues, the law provides that any patent, which for 

 reason of defective or insufficient speciOcations, is invalid or inoperative, may 

 be re-stated under such restrictions as are supposed to guard against fraud. 

 Usually the model deposited in the patent office is regarded as sufficient 

 evidence of the original invention to determine whether or not a reissue is 

 deserved. 



MARK REQUIRED. 



The law provides a penalty of $100 to be paid by any person who falsely 

 marks an article as patented, one-half of which shall go to the informer. 

 The law also requires all patented articles to be marked in such way as to call 

 attention to the fact that the article is patented, and provides that unless this 

 is done, no damages can be collected for unlicensed use, unless the use is per- 

 sisted in after a notice of infringement has been given. 



TRADE 3IARKS. 



The patent law also provides for the protection of trade marks; but thia 

 portion of the patent law was declared by the supreme court of the United 

 States as unconstitutional, during one of its sessions in 1879; consequently it 

 is in its present form not operative. Trade-marks are, however, protected by 

 decisions in common law, and to secure exclusive use of a trade-mark a patent 

 is not necessary. 



STATE LAWS. 



The decisions made at various times by the U. S. Courts have settled tho 

 question that State laws which impose any restrictions upon the sale of patents 

 or the collection of royalty for infringement, are invalid. Thus, in this State, 

 a statutory provision requires that all notes given for patent rights, to be of 

 any value, must indicate for what they were given; but in a case exactly the 

 same in one of our neighboring States, the U. S. court decided that such re- 

 strictions were unlawful, and the law requiring them was not valid. 



It must be carefully understood that all changes in the patent laws or restric- 

 tions upon the sale of patents, must be made by congress. 



NUMBER OF PATENTS. 



The patent office is one of the few governmental institutions that pay; 

 although in its offices, courts and corridors, are an immense number of em- 

 ployes, yet it will be found that its income exceeds its expenditures by about 

 $100,000 per year. The number of applications for patents is nearly 22,000 

 per year; the number of patents granted about 12,000. The total number 

 of patents granted by the United States to date are about 200,000. These 

 patents are granted for inventions of varying merit. The great mass of tho 

 patents are on insignificant things. Out of the 200,000 patented inventions, 

 there are probably not to exceed 100 inventions of such value as to revolution- 

 ize, to any considerable extent, the practice in any particular department. 



In order to show the number of patents given on certain subjects, the fol- 

 lowing table was compiled : 



