192 report — 1859. 



its probable amount, should be forthwith urged upon the Commissioners and 

 upon Parliament. 



The Report of the Patent Committee of the British Association to the 

 Leeds Meeting called prominent attention to the two following questions: — 



1st. Whether the present scale of payments should be maintained, or 

 reduced, so as to leave no greater surplus than necessary for official 

 expenses ? 



2nd. If the present scale of payment be maintained, how shall the surplus 

 be appropriated ? 



The Commissioners of Patents are in favour of maintaining the present 

 scale of payments, on the ground "that any material reduction in the 

 amount of" fees would undoubtedly tend to increase the number of useless 

 and speculative patents, in many cases taken merely for advertising pur- 

 poses." 



Your Committee are not insensible to the force of this observation ; but 

 they beg respectfully to doubt whether this money check has any effective 

 operation on the class of cases most requiring to be controlled, and whether 

 the remedy is not worse than the disease, in laying an unjustifiable burden on 

 the inventive genius of the country, and effecting a confiscation of property 

 of its own creation. 



Your Committee are much struck with the fact, that the application for 

 about 1000 patents is not prosecuted to completion, and in many cases 

 probably not beyond the first stage ; that the first periodical payment of 

 £50 at the end of the third year is not made in respect of nearly 1500 of 

 the 2000 patents granted ; and that the Commissioners anticipate during the 

 ensuing year the surrender or lapsing of no less than 450 out of the 550 

 patents which survived the first periodical payment. 



It must be borne in mind that the granting of patents in this country is 

 practically without control, no attempt having been made to interpose any 

 of the checks urged before the Committee of the House of Lords in the 

 Session of 1851, and provided for in the three bills of that Session, and in 

 the Act of the subsequent Session, now the law of the land. The payment 

 of £5 on the first application may be regarded as a registration fee : the 

 applicant makes this payment on lodging the papers, obtaining protection 

 and inchoate rights from the moment of his application. This was one of 

 the cardinal features of the new system of 1852 ; it has been productive of 

 the greatest benefit to inventors, especially to those of the poorer class, by 

 enabling them to obtain inchoate rights, and to create property for them- 

 selves by a simple record of their inventions, without publicity and the 

 obstruction of interested opponents. This power of placing inventions on 

 record is also resorted to in many cases by those who do not wish further 

 to secure or appropriate to themselves property in their ideas and inventions, 

 and which forthwith become public property. 



The 1500 lapsed patents must be regarded in a different light: these have 

 cost their authors no less than £37,500 for fees and stamps as a direct taxa- 

 tion on their inventive genius, in addition to and exclusive of other pay- 

 ments of at least an equal amount. 



Of these 1500 patents, it is believed that the progress of at least 1000 

 might be arrested with the consent of the applicants, if the inquiry before the 

 law officers were substantial instead of merely nominal. Thus a large use- 

 less outlay of capital in money and time would be avoided, talents unpro- 

 fitably employed would be directed into other channels, and the creation of 

 legal rights would be limited and reduced exactly in proportion as the appli- 

 cations were not proceeded with. 



