WATT. 377 



for supplying a general want already existing then 

 the inventor has to prepare himself for encountering 

 piracy in all its forms ; capitalists, who would be 

 ashamed to violate the law in their own persons, en- 

 couraging men of no substance to infringe the patent, 

 and omitting to pay the patentee's costs when these 

 tools are defeated. My learned and ingenious kins- 

 man, Dr. Forsyth, the inventor of the percussion 

 lock, passed the fourteen years of his patent right in 

 courts of justice, and in every instance prevailed ; but he 

 found the pirates penny less, the costs were to be paid, 

 and he never gained one shilling by an invention 

 which is, I believe, more universally used all over 

 Europe than any other, except, perhaps, Argand's 

 lamp. That invention was defeated in court, in con- 

 sequence of the imperfect state of the law in those 

 days, and of the absurd leaning of the Judges against 

 all patentees ; their Lordships displaying the utmost 

 ingenuity in discovering flaws, and calling into action 

 all the resources of legal astuteness in grinding, as 

 they went on, new law for the defeat of the inventor. 

 Of this, one instance only needs be given. If a speci- 

 fication contained ten good matters or processes, and 

 by oversight one was either not original, or did not 

 answer the description given in any other respect,* 

 the courts held the patent wholly void, and not merely 

 void for the erroneously described part, upon the 

 subtle and senseless ground that the Crown had been 

 deceived in the grant. 



* Turner v. Winter, 6 T. R. ; Rex v. Fuller, 3 B. and A. 

 My Acts of 1835 and 1840 have in great part remedied these sad 

 defects in the law ; others still remain. 



