228 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



Under the Act of July i, 1940, as amended (35 U.S.C. 42), an applicant 

 against whom a secrecy order has been issued by the Commissioner of 

 Patents is entided to make "tender" of his invention to the Government and 

 to receive compensation for the use of the invention from the date of such 

 use rather than the date of issue of the patent. The purpose of the statute 

 v^as to make the latest inventions available to the Government; and the 

 Secretaries of War and the Navy were authorized by the Act to negotiate 

 with the owner of the invention for the settlement of claims for compen- 

 sation while the application was pending, although no claim might be 

 filed against the Government in the Court of Claims until after issuance 

 of the patent. 



In order that the OSRD divisions might have the benefit of the inven- 

 tions claimed in applications tendered to the War and Navy Departments, 

 a procedure was established whereby those Departments referred copies 

 of the tendered applications to the OSRD divisions through the Advisor 

 on Patent Matters. It was realized that the Technical Aides to whom these 

 applications were referred were in the best position to furnish available 

 information useful in the settlement of any claim. Accordingly, they were 

 requested to inform the Advisor on Patent Matters as to whether the al- 

 leged invention in the application was new, operative or adaptable to 

 immediate use. 



In administering OSRD contracts containing the short form patent 

 clause, Lavender operated under a general delegation of authority that 

 provided (i) for a reference of each invention either to the War Depart- 

 ment or the Navy Department, depending upon which department was 

 the source of a request to OSRD to undertake the particular project, for a 

 determination as to whether or not an application for a patent should be 

 filed on behalf of the Government; (2) that if the interested department 

 determined that such an application should be filed, it should file the appli- 

 cation and arrange for the assignment of the entire right, title and interest 

 to the Government; and (3) that if the interested department determined 

 that no patent application should be filed on behalf of the Government, 

 it should notify the contractor that it might file in its own behalf, subject 

 to the grant to the Government of a nonexclusive, royalty-free license for 

 governmental purposes. 



The correspondence load of the Patent Division frequently ran as high 

 as 600 to 700 letters a week; by January 31, 1946, 6746 invention reports 

 had been processed by the division. Of these, 2601 had been covered by 

 applications for patent filed in the United States Patent Office, of which 

 1276 were filed by the contractors, 805 by the War Department, and 520 

 by the Navy Department. The Services had notified the patent division 

 that they would file applications for patent on 513 additional invention 

 reports, but that 1432 were not of sufficient interest to warrant the prep- 



