46 

 Mr. Riley presented the followiug paper: 



GOVERNMENT WORK AND THE PATENT OFFICE. 



By C. V. KiLEY, Washington, D. C. 

 [Author's abstract.] 



The paper was based on a patent recently obtained by three parties 

 in California for the treatment of trees by hydrocyanic acid gas for 

 the destruction of scale-insects and other insects that injuriously affect 

 trees. It reviewed at length the efforts of the Department in this line 

 of investigation and showed conclusively that this gas treatment had 

 originated and been perfected by one of the agents of the Division of 

 Entomology, who had, in fact, for the past five years, been carrying on a 

 series of experiments in this particular line under the author's direction; 

 that so soon as the treatment came to be recognized as of the greatest 

 utility and perfected so that it was cheap and available to all needing 

 to use it, application for a patent was made by the parties in question, 

 and in spite of an official protest from the Department of Agriculture 

 pending the application, a patent was finally granted, as, under the 

 law, the Commissioner of Patents has no right to consider ex parte tes- 

 timony pending examination, even though offered by an officer of the 

 Government in the interest of the public. The fact that the process 

 had been fully described and recorded in official reports from the De- 

 partment of Agriculture did not prevent the issuing of the patent. So 

 valuable is this treatment considered that an effort has been made in 

 southern California to subscribe the sum of $10,000 to buy the right 

 from the patentees. The author remarked that he personally had no 

 hesitation in advising the orange-growers to pay no heed to the claims 

 of the patentees, and that it would be wiser to combine to oppose them 

 if suit were brought than to subscribe to give them an undeserved and 

 valuable royalty. 



His own conviction was that the patent was invalid and the certificate 

 but a piece of paper carrying no absolute evidence of priority of inven- 

 tion ; and it is greatly to be regretted that, through legal technicality or 

 otherwise, it should ever have been granted. 



The author mentioned other cases of this kind where, after years of 

 labor and large expenditures on the part of the Department of Agri- 

 culture, valuable results had been obtained. In some cases they took 

 the form of mechanisms, which were described and figured in the 

 official reports; in other cases of mere discoveries. He said : 



There is nothing more discouraging to .an officer of the Governmeut engaged in 

 original investigations, with a view to benefiting the public, than t lie eftorts of various 

 private individuals to appropriate the results, of which the foregoing case is an ex- 

 ample. I liave been engaged now for nearly a (juarter of a century either as a State 

 or Governmeut officer iu investigations, having for their object in the main the pro- 

 tection of plants and domestic animals from the attacks of injurious insects. Either 



