242 Patents for Mechanical and Chemical Inventions, . (Oct. 1; 
issue letters patent, “ and grants of privilege, for the term of fourteen years (or wider), of 
the sole working and making of any manner of new manufacture, within this realm, to the 
true and first inventor (or inventors) of such manufactures.” miles 
These patents are granted, as well for discoveries made here, as for others imported 
from foreign countries, on condition of the invention being discriminated and most full 
disclosed in a specification, to be enrolled within the time limited in the patent, for the free 
inspection afterwards of the public (and whereof official copies, including the drawings, 
may be obtained even by foreigners), without which enrolment, the patent is void; as it 
may also subsequently be rendered and repealed, on the legal shewing of any person 
interested, that the specification is insyfficient, or deceptively redundant ; or that it claims, 
in whole or in part, any inventions previously known here, and publicly used or published ; 
or that the thing claimed is unimportant or inadequate to its alleged purpose, or useless 
to the public ; or if it can be shewn, that more than five persons are sharers in the patent. It 
has also been determined, that the Attorney-General may indict criminally any person 
who, after the expiring of a patent, continues to designate and vend the wares thereto- 
fore made under it, as patent articles—this being no longer their character; but the inven- 
tion then is the property of the public, in return for the previous monopoly it had tolerated ; 
those too are equally liable who vend pretended patent articles, for which no specified 
patent has existed, or which has been repealed. 
Under this last view of the subject, it appears of considerable importance that the 
titles and objects of the expiring patents should be made more generally known: we 
therefore have inserted a list in p. 246, considerably improved, of all such English 
patents as will expire in the month of October of the present year; and we propose to 
continue-such a monthly list, in each of our succeeding numbers—accompanied, occa- 
sionally, with statements and remarks, as to the psefulness, and the success or otherwise, 
which haye attended the patents ducing their term (on which head we shall be glad to 
receive communications from patentees and others); also as to any extensions or new 
applications of inventions which may seem practicable, in consequence of the accessions 
for improvement thus made to the common stock of our mechanical and chemical means, 
We propose, likewise, to commence a complete list, somewhat improved as to its 
arrangements, of the new English patents, down to such a period as may include an 
entire calendar month’s patents, which will be in ample time for such of our readers 
whom business or curiosity may induce to attend the offices of enrolment and 
peruse the specifications (of whose contents, however, they will be allowed to take 
no notes in writing) ; because the greater part of these enrolments are now deferred 
by the parties, until near six months after the date and commencement of the four- 
teen years’ term of the patent; although, before such enrolment, the patent is but 
a mere dead letter, the patentee not having disclosed. with any useful precision what are 
the inventions or the claims which he means to set up under his patent. 'The public, there- 
fore, are little interested in any earlier announcement, as to patents, than the time of 
their enrolment.* As to inventors who may contemplate the obtaining of patents, and 
those engaged in improving any manufacture or process with such views, they, by the 
deposit of a notice fee (absurdly called “ entering a caveat”), will have sent immediately 
to their residence, from the patent office, the title under which any new patent may be 
applied for in the department of manufacture or art mentioned in their caveat. 
Our readers are meny of them probably not aware, that the specifications themselves, of 
the greater part of the modern patents of chief importance to the manufactures, never are, 
or indeed can be, published in the periodical works, not even in those deyoted expressly 
to this object, because of the great numbers, size, and complication of the drawings by 
which they are accompanied ; and that the second-rate specifications, as to ingenuity and 
importance, and those of inferior consequence, are those ‘usually printed,—including 
amongst them, we are sorry to say, many mere schemes, which are useless, or absurd. 
We shall therefore leave to others the task of giving an account of every patent inven- 
tion, and continue the plan heretofore acted on in our work, of selecting only from 
the specifications those patents which are of actual utility. 
* It would be a most useful regulation, if the titles, properly amplified, of newly-enrolled 
patents for inventions were weekly published in the London Gazette ; wherein, certainly, 
matters of so great importance as these monopolies for fourteen years, ought to be recorded, 
and to do so in any of their earlier stages would be useless. In this publication, the pub- 
lic ought to be told in which of the two different enrolment offices, the patentees have chosen 
to deposit their specifications, for avoiding the loss of time and expence of fees, which 
now attend searching the wrong office, in almost half the instances. 
To, 
