424 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1322 



ting. It will be an inexpensive experiment, 

 since its operation is aimed to be self-sup- 

 porting. 



The whole system of administration com- 

 prehended under its provisions will have to be 

 constructed with the most sedulous care by 

 men specializing in the work, keeping prom- 

 inently in mind the cardinal fact that this is 

 a matter of research and development. The 

 value of the experiment, indeed the span of 

 its operation, depends upon the wisdom and 

 circumspection with which it is handled. 

 Being something absolutely novel in patent 

 legislation, there are no standards and no 

 information for guidance, and these must be 

 acquired as this administration proceeds, by 

 experiment, just as in any other form of 

 research work. 



This Bill provides for centralizing the ad- 

 ministration here planned. If this were left 

 to each bureau of the government to work 

 out as it saw fit, the authority thus scattered 

 would result in endless confusion, duplication 

 of effort, increase of expense and, through 

 lack of proper equipment, failure to provide 

 the means for constructive economic work on 

 any adequate or feasible scale. This is prac- 

 tically the present situation and is what this 

 Bill is aimed to correct. It is infinitely 

 better to focus administration in one agency, 

 providing service common to all, in and out- 

 side the government employ, such agency 

 having the ability through enlarged oppor- 

 tunity, to specialize in this work and thereby 

 to develop into a power for really great 

 aeoomplishment. 



Assisted and supported by the cooperation 

 of all in interest and, through the larger per- 

 spective acquired by the study and correlation 

 of the problems of all, this system insures the 

 working out of administrative details in the 

 most comprehensive way, making jwssible 

 that sort of team work in the realm of in- 

 vention that proved so necessary to success in 

 this field during the world struggle just 

 ended. 



In this connection. Professor Millikan has 

 already pointed out in Science,^ that one of 



2 Science, September 25, 1919, p. 285, et seq. 



the important facts demonstrated by the war 

 was that inventive genius working without 

 direction and correlation proved compara- 

 tively futile. Not one invention in the mili- 

 tary field out of ten thousand offered the gov- 

 ernment by isolated inventors proved of any 

 value whatever. It was only when the best 

 scientific brains of the country were mobi- 

 lized, through the Council of National De- 

 fense, into definite groups, each group spe- 

 cializing in some particular field, all being 

 in cooperation and in close touch with similar 

 groups of the Entente, that the weight of 

 American inventive genius as a most impor- 

 tant factor in winning the war began to be 

 felt. From that moment, the submarine, the 

 real problem of the war, was doomed. This 

 grouping and coordinating of the country's 

 scientists developed a vast amount of in- 

 ventive material, the major part of which has 

 a direct peace bearing of immense value, but 

 which is in serious danger of being lost 

 through the want of such an agency as herein 

 contemplated to conserve, develop and admin- 

 ister it and to translate it into industrial 

 application and use. 



There are several special phases of the 

 patent situation affecting the government and 

 its workers as well as the public, which the 

 economic administration here provided will 

 fundamentally improve. For instance, there 

 is at present no disinterested organization ex- 

 tensively studying the economic aspect of 

 patents after they have left the patent office. 

 The information available in this field has 

 been derived solely from members of the 

 patent bar, from manufacturers and from in- 

 ventors. But each of these classes represents 

 a special interest with a particular and par- 

 tisan viewpoint and need. This bill, however, 

 creates an agency which is peculiarly well 

 equipped to study the subject in the broad 

 light of patent administration on behalf of 

 the public. 



Again, it sometimes occurs in the govern- 

 ment service that an invention is developed 

 that the government would like to make use 

 of, or to introduce for the benefit of the 

 public, but which has an application not 



