REPORT OF THE COUNCIL. APPENDIX II. lxvil 



The following is the resolution in which the Committee have emhodied their 

 ■opinion upon this point : — 



Resolved unanimously, — "That Sub-Section a should be struck out, and 

 that Clause 19 should be altered accordingly, so as to read thus : — ' The 

 patent shall be liable at any time at the end of three years from its date to 



be revoked on the following ground ': — And that the words 



which appear in Clause 22, Sub-Section 2, of the Bill of 1877 should be 

 inserted on this Bill, viz., ' that it is made to appear to the Lord Chancellor 

 that 



Clause 24. — The Committee now desire to call attention to Section 24 of the 

 Bill headed " Imported Inventions." With one exception, namely, Clause b of 

 Sub-Section 5, which restricts the time within which an imported invention can 

 be patented in England to six months after the date of the earliest foreign patent, 

 a restriction which appears to the Committee to be veiy undesirable, this section 

 is practically the same as that of Section 25 of the Patent Law Amendment Act, 

 1852, and thus it is that the Committee have omitted all mention of it in the sum- 

 mary of principal changes given at the outset of this report. The Committee, 

 however, feel so strongly that the Section 25 of the Act of 1852 was based upon 

 the old erroneous notion of the object of a Patent-law, and is a relic of an anti- 

 quated state of things — now entirely uncalled for and mischievous — that they trust 

 Clause 24, which practically re-enacts Clause 25 of the Act of 1852, may be ex- 

 punged altogether from the Bill. The Committee desire to be allowed to explain 

 their views on this subject. The old notion of a Patent-law was that the inventor 

 was a person seeking to obtain a protection for himself at the expense of the public, 

 who, it was assumed, should regard the inventor as an antagonist, and should do 

 all they could to procure a disclosure of the invention upon the shortest possible 

 term of payment by patent right ; or, better still, by no such payment at all. It 

 is to be feared that these erroneous notions still prevail amongst those who have 

 not studied the subject, but those who have studied it know that a Patent-law can 

 only be desirable so long as it is for the benefit of the community as a whole. 

 Those also who are acquainted with the introducing of inventions know that 

 nothing short of a person having a strong interest in developing the invention will 

 cause it to be taken up, the more important the invention is the greater being the 

 indisposition to adopt it, since its introduction may involve the disuse of existing 

 plant and machinery, the expenditure of fresh capital upon plant, and the teaching 

 of workmen to follow new processes. One who knows the subject from its very 

 foundation has truly said, that if an invention ' were found lying in the street it 

 would be for the benefit of the community that a father should be assigned to it, 

 so that there might be some one having a substantial interest in urging its 

 development.' 



Clause 24 of the present Bill (25 of the Act of 1852) is based altogetheron 

 the assumption that it is to the interest of the community to be in possession 

 of what the Committee may perhaps be pardoned for styling 'orphan inven- 

 tions.' 



Further, with respect to section 24 (25 of 1852) being a relic of an antiquated 

 state of things — when the means of communication between countries were limited, 

 and international travellers were rare, when the technical literature of one country 

 did not circulate in other lands where a different language was spoken, it might be 

 that if an inventor did not patent his invention in a foreign country the foreigners 

 would remain ignorant of it, while if he did so patent it, he would afford the 

 information to the foreigners, and that so, if after a time his foreign patent came to 

 an end, the foreigners would be in a better position than any British subject if a 

 patent for the invention continued to prevail here. But under the existing condi- 

 tion of extended travelling, and of the interchange of technical literature, the idea 

 that the foreigner will only know of an invention from its having been patented 

 in his country is manifestly untenable, and thus there is no reason why a man who 

 has taken out patents in foreign countries for an invention should be on a different 

 footing, as regards the English patent, from that on which he would have been had 



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