Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 73 



Does not it often happen, that after a person has taken out a pa- 

 tent for an invention, he makes some material improvement in the 

 invention which at present requires another patent? — It is a very 

 common case for the same invention to require two, three, and four 

 successive patents; and it is a very great hardship, it operates pre- 

 judicially to the public as well as to the inventor. In France, as 

 improvements arise, successive specifications of those improvements 

 can be added (at very little expense) to the original specification. 



Would not that be very advantageous ? — Very advantageous in- 

 deed ; here there is no remedy for a defective specification. A pa- 

 tentee is compelled to specify his invention within the given period ; 

 and if he is not then prepared to specify his invention, with all its 

 details of execution, in a perfect manner, his patent right must take 

 the chance of his imperfect specification. If he afterwards practises 

 the invention in a better manner than that which he specified, in- 

 stead of its being held that he is deserving of public approbation, 

 for having pursued his course of invention further than at first, the 

 courts of law assume that he has committed a fraud, by concealing 

 something which he ought to have put into the specification. He 

 can only refute that imputation by proving in evidence, that the 

 specification does contain sufficient instructions to enable the public 

 to exercise the invention with real advantage. It is impossible for 

 him to prove the negative, that he did not know the improvement 

 at the time of specifying. When a man invents and takes out a 

 patent for a machine, he must use his utmost exertion to get it made, 

 and put to work, before the time when the specification is due, in 

 order to make a trial of it, and regulate his specification thereby : 

 perhaps some part fails, or requires to be re-made, and prevents his 

 making any trial; but the time being come, he must make his spe- 

 cification as well as he and his advisers can guess, though lie has 

 gone through nearly all the trouble and expense of a trial. A ?ew 

 days after having inrolled, he may find out, upon experiment, some 

 important improvement in the means of carrying his invention into 

 effect, which either had not occurred to him before, or if he had 

 thought of it, he could not have safely put it into the specification, 

 because it was a mere speculative idea. If he had put in that spe- 

 culative idea, and it had turned out on subsequent tria). to be wrong, 

 it would be said in a court of law that it was done to mislead the 

 public from the real invention, which he reserved for his own private 

 practice. 



In that case the inconvenience arises from want of time ? — Yes ; 

 and the expense of those hurried proceedings, to get a sufficient 

 trial of new machines to enable us to specify properly is excessive, 

 being frequently obliged to keep people working night and day. I 

 have sat up all night many times myself, for such work, and have 

 undergone such fatigue, that I could not be any way sure of what 

 I was doing. Even when a successful trial has been accomplished, 

 there remains so little time afterwards, that the specification nnist 

 be composed in such haste as to run the greatest risk of some in- 

 accuracy or error. 



N. S. Vol. 7. No. 37. Jan. 1830. L Sup- 



