March i, 1909.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



201 



RETALIATORY PATENT BILLS. 



DECENT legislation in England in relation to patents is having 

 •^ »• an effect elsewhere. For instance, Representative Frank 

 I). Currier has introduced a bill in the United States congress 

 (H. R. 27,534) to amend the patent laws so as to provide "That 

 whenever a patent is issued to any citizen or subject of a foreign 

 country it shall be subject with respect to its manufacture in this 

 country to all the limitations, conditions, and restrictions that are 

 imposed by the country of said citizen or subject upon the manu- 

 facture in that country of patents issued therein to citizens of 

 the United States : Provided further. That this act shall not 

 affect any patent heretofore granted." 



The Times (London) reports that the I'Vench government 

 proposes to amend the law of July 5. 1844. which enacts tliat 

 failure to exercise patent rights shall entail lapse of patent, in 

 the following sense: Patent rights shall he held to lapse in the 

 event of failure on the part of the holder either to exercise his 

 rights in France or in the French colonies for a period of three 

 years after applying for his certificate, or to resume exercise 

 after a similar interval, or secondly, in the event of only partial 

 exercise of the patent in FTench territory. In the second event 

 the patent courts will be invested w-ith discretionary powers to 

 call upon the holder of the patent to show cause why he should 

 not exercise his rights in French territory "in an adequate 

 •degree." 



."Kpropos of an editorial on "Evading British Patent Law" in 

 the last India Rubber World, it was interesting to find in the 

 simultaneous issue of Electrical World (New York), in an 

 article on this subject by an English barrister, the* suggestion : 



"There are divers courses open to the inventor foreign to 

 England which will enable him to avoid having to set up a 

 factory on British soil. In the first place, he may manufacture 

 the parts of a complicated machine, and have them assembled 

 in England. The point has not yet been decided, but the Eng- 

 lish courts may hold that this constitutes manufacture." 



We reoret to note that a former friend is circularizing the 

 rubber trade under the name India Rubber Publishing Co. He 

 or his company have absolutely no connection with The Tniii.n 

 Rl-bber World, or The India Rubber Publishing Co. 



If the doctrine of "lese majesty" obtained in England we 

 wonder what would have happened to the editor of Tlic Standard 

 (London) when, in the issue of Jainiary 30, that paper, in dealing 

 with Congo rubber, (|uotcd from a report of "his Botanic Majes- 

 ty's consul at Boma." 



The latest evidence that "plantation" is good rubber is 

 found in the statement by an eminent British manufacturer that 

 it is being counterfeited. He claims to have had offers of several 

 lots of so-called plantation rubber "very little of which has ever 

 come from any plantation." We may expect in time to see a 

 demand in the trade for experts who can determine "plantation" 

 from "wild" rubber, unless the planters should succeed generally 

 in producing better grades than can be obtained from native 

 sources. 



Returns from ten rubber plantation companies in Ceylon 

 and Malaya, taken at random, as will be seen on another page, 

 show a total production of 209 tons in 1906; 482 tons in 1907. 

 and 813 tons in 1908. We take it that these figures indicate fairly 

 well the rate of increase of production on well developed rub- 

 ber plantations, and they point to the possibilities to be considered 

 when plantations now tapping thousands of trees come to deal 

 with millions which are growing thriftil\- but have not yet 

 reached a tappable size. 



The world's tob.vcco crop in 1907 amounted almost to 

 3,000,000,000 pounds. This is an enormous weight, and the 

 money value was also great. The subject is of interest in 

 connection with rubber culture in that the introduction of 

 tobacco growing into so many countries other than its native 

 habitat has been so successful from a cultural standpoint, and 

 likewise so prolitable. There would seem to be no natural 

 reason why tobacco should prove superior in these respects 

 to rubber yielding species. 



ENZYMES AND THE COLOR OF RUBBER. 



A KIXENT visitor to the United States, where he stayed for 

 ^^ a brief week only, summoned by cable for consolation, was 

 Dr. David Spcnce, who has long been connected with the 

 Liverpool Society of Tropical Research. Dr. Spcnce has made 

 a reputation for certain discoveries of a specific for the cure for 

 the sleeping sickness, a disease that is as fatal in Africa, particu- 

 larly in the rubber gathering regions, as yellow fever has ever been 

 in tropical .America. It is in connection with his investigations 

 of crude rubber, however, and particularly of the latex of rubber 

 producing trees, that the trade knows him best. One of his most 

 interesting and valuable discoveries relates to the cause for the 

 dark color of Para and other rubbers. This is due to an active 

 oxidizing enzyme. The discoverer's own description is here 

 added : 



"These enzymes are probably, as I learned, present in the pro- 

 tein of the latex of all rubber producing plants, and so act 

 upon the insoluble portion of the protein that it is converted into 

 colored products, which impart the dark color to the rubber. In 

 my original work I determined that the temperature at which 

 the oxidizing enzymes are destroyed lies very close to the point 

 where in general other similar enzymes perish. To obtain rubber 

 only slightly darkened, it seems, at first glance, only necessary 

 to destroy the active enzymes in the latex or the rubber by 

 heating above the sterilizing temperature, 73 deg. C. But this 

 method of destroying the enzymes by means of heat is not so 

 easily accomplished in practice, and this fact led me to the 

 belief that in the latex and in the rubber there was a heat 

 resistin.g agent, zymogen, which slowly changed into active 

 enzymes. 



"I found, for example, that freshly cut pieces of Para rubber, 

 washed thoroughly with water for more than an hour to remove 

 the strongly colored soluble matters, gradually darkened and after 

 exposure to the air finally became entirely black. Potassium 

 cyanide, a mercury chloride solution, or acetic acid, failed to 

 prevent the dark coloration, or at least after the above solutions 

 were completely removed by washing. I made many experi- 

 ments with the latex of Funtumia elastica. but found without ex- 

 ception that heating the latex or the rubber prepared therefrom 

 even to 100° C. for half an hour was insufflcicnt to alter 

 the tendency to turn dark. It is known that certain natives 

 cm tlic West African coast obtain rubber from the latex of 

 Funtumia elastica by heating it with water until the separating 

 rubber jiarticles coalesce into balls. Nevertheless, I have seen 

 no sort of rubber prepared in this manner in which the effect 

 of the active oxydase enzyme was not plainly observable. 



"Since the oxidizing enzyme is very stable towards heat, the 

 best method for h.indling the latex to secure only faintly colored 

 rubber appears to be the one presented previously by me and now 

 repeated here. By this method the enzyme itself is to be removed 

 as completely as possible before coagulation. The latex is 

 diluted with water before the coagulation and the agglomerating 

 rubber particles washed well (this applies at least to Funtumia 

 elastica) in order to remove the oxidizijug- enzyme as well as 

 other foreign matter from the rubber. Bn this manner a snow 

 white rubber is obtained. 



"Vet to prevent as much as posjjiWb the, han.eful effects whe.ili 



