122 On Patents and their Utilization. 



mittee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the 

 working of the Patent Laws, said, " I believe it would be 

 better for all parties, employer and employed, inventor and 

 practical man, if patent rights were abolished. If a work- 

 man, who thinks he has discovered a new process, would go 

 to his master, divulging his secret, the master might reward 

 him with ^1 or £o, and the man would be able to go about 

 something else." 



Setting aside that this would be simply instituting a 

 sj^stem of trade secrets in a modified form — the secret being 

 in the hand of the master and the man, not the man alone ; 

 it lies open to the very serious objection, that the reward 

 given would scarcely ever satisfy the person who received it. 



John Stuart Mill, alluding to this subject, speaks of the 

 advisability of substituting, for patent rights, a system of 

 public rewards to those who had really developed some really 

 useful invention. It is questionable, however, whether any 

 such system might not prove altogether impracticable on an 

 extended scale. The decision upon the merits of all the 

 patents deposited in England, France, or America, would 

 prove a task at once Herculean and invidious ; and no 

 amount of fairness displayed, in respect to conclusions 

 arrived at, could possibly prevent suspicions of favouritism 

 existing to an extent that would inevitably prove an evil 

 to the community. 



Some argue against patents that the • present laws 

 benefit no one but the capitalist who purchases the inven- 

 tion, and that the real inventor generally remains a poor 

 man. At present, the capitalist, there is no doubt, tries to 

 make the best possible bargain ; but let him be ever so 

 anxious to do so, he cannot adopt a legally-registered inven- 

 tion, for which he is in treaty, until the person treating with 

 him is a consenting party. On the other hand, were there 

 no patent laws, the moment a secret was in the hands of the 

 capitalist such person might show the inventor to the door, 

 takmg advantage of the discovery and avoiding everything 

 in the shape of payment at the same time. 



It is further urged that inventions are seldom single ; that 

 when any person makes a discovery he is generally only one 

 of many who have been contemporaneously pursuing the 

 same inquiries, and have, perhaps independently of each 

 other, each arrived at the same result. In such a case the 

 granting of a patent rewards the one, leaving the claims of 

 the other's altogether unrecognized. The case appears a hard 



