THE UNITED STATES PATENT LAWS: 

 HISTORICALLY AND PRACTICALLY CONSIDERED. 



BY CYRUS N. ANDERSON. 



[Cyrus N. Anderson, lawyer, is one of the best known patent attorneys in the United 

 States; he is a member of the firm of Wilham C. Strawbridge of Philadelphia; be- 

 sides his work as an attorney he has made a careful study of patents from a his- 

 torical standpoint and has embodied the result of his investigations in writings for 

 the reviews.] 



Several years ago a writer in the Iron Industry Gazette, 

 an English publication, said: ''Disparagement of patents is 

 common and easy, but it should not be forgotten by those 

 who sneer at inventions that, out of a total of eight billions 

 of capital invested in manufacturing in the United States, 

 patents form the basis for an investment of about six billions. 

 Evidently, the United States system of encouraging invention 

 that has resulted in the patenting of over 500,000 inventions 

 is a system which is exceedingly wise and valuable. The only 

 thing that has enabled manufacturers to make so wonderful a 

 progress in the United States is its patent system." 



Up to the present time, there have been granted in the 

 United States nearly 800,000 patents, and, while I have no 

 recent figures, there is no doubt but that the proportion of 

 capital invested in manufactures with patents as a basis is 

 as great, if not greater, now than it was when the foregoing 

 statement was made. 



At a time when the right of property in patents, or rather 

 in patented inventions," is so well recognized, it strikes one 

 as a curious fact that there ever was or should have been a 

 time when a right to such property was not recognized. 

 Yet the fact is that in comparatively recent periods, consid- 

 ered in the light of the world's history, property rights in 

 connection with inventions were not recognized, and if a 

 man was possessed of an inventive turn of mind and was an 

 inventive genius, and made inventions or improvements in 

 machines or in mechanical devices or in the art of doing 



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