TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 743 



and women earn less not only because they produce less, but also because what they 

 produce is usually valued in the market at a lower rate. This seems due mainly 

 to (a) custom, (b) public opinion, (c) women's lower standard of life, and (d) failure 

 to combine for their own protection. The remedies seem to lie in the direction of 

 education, both of public opinion and of women. 



2. The Taxation of Inventors. By Lewis Edmunds, D.Sc. 



There are few classes of the community, in a manufacturing and industrial 

 country like Great Britain, to whom the nation at large is more indebted for its 

 prosperity than the inventors. It would therefore appear to be to the interest of 

 the Government to oifer every facility and encouragement to inventors, and with 

 this object to afford them full opportunity for the acquisition and retention of 

 property in their discoveries. But the contrary is the fact. There is no species of 

 property which is so heavily pressed upon or so burdened with taxes as the very 

 limited one which the law allows an inventor to acquire. 



Although distinctions may be drawn, the monopoly granted by a patent is in 

 many respects of the same character as the copyright acquired by an author, and 

 the word copyright might be almost equally well applied to the rights acquired by 

 an author and by an inventor. But while the properties of an author and an 

 inventor are very similar in their nature, the position of an author is immensely 

 superior. He or his representatives hold the copyright for life and seven years after, 

 or for forty-two years from the date of publication, whichever may be the longer 

 term ; and no fees of any kind are payable to the Government, except when for the 

 purpose of securing rights in foreign countries, or of taking legal proceedings for 

 an infringement, it is necessary to register the copyright at Stationers' Hall, in 

 which case a small fee is demanded. There is no special taxation of authors of any 

 kind, unless, indeed, we count as such the five copies which have to be presented 

 to the British Museum and the University libraries, and this is a small matter. But 

 an inventor is not so fortunate. By the nature of the case, he can only secure 

 himself after complying with numerous formalities and making a full disclosure of 

 what his invention is. This, of course, cannot be complained of. But even then 

 the inventor obtains the monopoly of his invention for fourteen years only, and 

 this is now subject, after the first four years of the term, to the payment of heavy 

 annual fees, ranging from 10/. to 201. and amounting to 150/. in all. It is contended 

 that these renewal fees are an unjustifiable tax upon inventors, and also that the 

 preliminary fees payable at the Patent Ottice in connection with the application 

 for the grant of the patent and the lodging of the specifications being il., and quite 

 sufficient to cover the whole of the Office expenses, no further demand ought to be 

 made by the Treasury. 



If it were proposed to put a tax of 10/. or more a year on every literary work, 

 or else to abolish the copyright of the author, the suggestion would be scouted ; yet 

 inventors, with every claim to equality of treatment, are mulcted of these heavy 

 fees or else lose their patent right. 



Under the recent Patents Act of 1883, the total expense of a patent rimning 

 for the fuU term of fourteen years was reduced from 175/. to 154/., but the whole 

 abatement took place in the initial expenses, which were reduced from 25/. to 4/. 

 What are now called 'renewal fees' to the amount of 150/. are payable as before, 

 either in amounts of 50/. and 100/. before the end of the fourth and eighth years, 

 or in annual payments in the fourth and succeeding years varying from 10/. to 20/. 

 As a matter of fact, the patentees, with few exceptions, elect to make the annual 

 payments in preference to the lump sums of 50/. and 100/. 



In the United States of America inventors ai'e not discouraged as they are here. 

 There, a patent may be obtained, which lasts for seventeen years, for a payment of 

 about 71. 10s. in the first instance, and no further fees of any kind are payable. A 

 British patent which runs for fourteen years, therefore, costs more than twenty 

 times as much as a United States patent which endures for seventeen years. Con- 

 sequently, although there is a search as to novelty which weeds out a large 

 proportion, there are twice as many patents issued in the States as there are in 



