422 THE SCIENTIFIC PAPERS OF 



expenditure of ingenuity, time, and money which he had made. 

 The duration of a patent should be sufficient to enable a patentee 

 to earn a fair remuneration ; and as regards this term, the Bill 

 proposed to substitute seventeen for fourteen years, a period which 

 he thought would generally satisfy the justice of the case ; but in 

 case of exceptional circumstances, there would still be power to 

 grant extension. Another important point in the Bill was that 

 the government would be bound by patents. At present it was a 

 crying evil that government departments stood above patents ; 

 and speaking from his own experience, he could prove that, so far 

 from this benefiting government departments, they were left to 

 their own resources, and, instead of applying an invention properly, 

 they were likely to apply it improperly, simply because they had 

 not the guidance and advice of the . patentee. There was no 

 reason why a public department should not be liable to remunerate 

 an inventor as much as any of her Majesty's subjects, provided 

 the claims made upon them were not unreasonable ones. This 

 latter consideration brought him to another provision of the Bill, 

 which he would urge very much on the inventor class, viz., that 

 for compulsory licenses. This had not an agreeable sound in the 

 ears of many inventors, who maintained that their invention was 

 their property, and they should have liberty to deal with it just as 

 they thought proper. But he could not admit that doctrine of 

 absolute property. A patent was a trust, the inventor was made 

 the guardian of the invention in order that he might bring it into 

 public use. If he should assume the position of the dog in the 

 manger, the law ought to step in and say, " No, that is not the 

 bargain ; it is for public use, and for the public benefit, that the 

 grant has been made." There were many inventions which could 

 be carried out quite well by the inventor himself, as, for instance, 

 if it were a new machine for a special purpose, such as a meter, 

 the patentee or his friends might erect works to supply the public, 

 and there would be nonnecessity for compulsory licenses ; but if 

 it were a process which applied to an important industry, such as 

 the iron or steel industry, or to spinning, it would be a public 

 injustice if the inventor were to say, " I will empower this one 

 factory only, to carry out this invention, to the detriment of the 

 whole country." It was only just that under such circumstances 

 the law should step in and arbitrate between the parties concerned. 



