THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 11 
of the Department, and that they may be made available to other inter- 
ested industries and to the Government itself on suitable terms. 
These arrangements have been found to be generally satisfactory, 
and at the present time twenty-four of such Research Associations have 
been formed to whom licences have been issued by the Board of Trade. 
Others are in process of formation, and may be expected to be at work 
at an early date. ‘These Research Associations are concerned with 
nearly all our leading industries. The official addresses of most of 
them are in London; others have their headquarters in Manchester, 
Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Northampton, Coventry, Glasgow, and 
: Belfast. 
: The Department has further established a Records Bureau, which is 
responsible for receiving, abstracting, filing and collating communica- 
tions from research workers, boards, institutions, or associations 
related to or supervised by the Depastment, This information is 
regarded as confidential, and will not be communicated except in 
writing, and after consultation with the research worker or organisation 
= which it has been received. Also such non-confidential informa- 
tion as comes into the possession of the Department which is of evident 
or probable vaiue to those working in touch with the Department is 
collected and filed in the Bureau and made generally available. 
It is also a function of the Bureau to effect economy in preventing 
repetition and overlapping of investigations and in ensuring that the 
fullest possible use is made of the results of research. Thus, the 
programmes of Research Associations are compared in order to ensure 
that researches are not unwittingly duplicated by different Research 
Associations. Sometimes two or more Research Associations may be 
interested in one problem from different points of view, and when this 
occurs it may be possible for the Bureau to arrange a concerted attack 
upon the common problem, each Research Association undertaking that 
phase of the work in which it is specially interested and sharing in the 
general results. 
As researches carried out under the Department frequently produce 
results for which it is possible to take out patents, careful consideration 
has been given to the problems of policy arising on this subject, and 
other Government Departments also interested have been freely con- 
sulted. As the result, an Inter-Departmental Committee has been 
established with the following terms of reference :— 
(1) To consider the methods of dealing with inventions made by 
workers aided or maintained from public funds, whether such 
workers be engaged (a) as research workers, or (b) in some 
other technical capacity, so as to give a fair reward to the 
: inventor and thus encourage further effort, to secure the 
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