102 Our Patent Lams. [January, 



business without the assistance of patented inventions, as 

 he cannot invent sufficiently for himself. Surely he ought 

 to thank the patentees for helping him. 



Mr. Montague Smith, the judge, has found great incon- 

 venience from the multiplicity of patents which the inventor 

 has had to wade through to see that he has not been anti- 

 cipated. The meaning of this seems that the inventor was 

 obliged to see if the Government had not deceived him by 

 selling the rights to some one else before him. The law 

 again failing to come up to our expectations. 



Sir W. Armstrong then says, You cannot give a monopoly 

 without excluding other persons who are working on the 

 same subject: That is a truism. Let him who works and 

 finds first be rewarded. Will you reward those who find 

 after him ? 



Mr. Piatt gives a good objection to patents as they are, 

 but it applies wholly to the law or to that law-officer who 

 allows patents, or both, and we again say that no one has 

 sufficiently explained how thoroughly unjust are the^workings 

 of our patent law. 



Mr. Woodcroft, to our mind, settles the question against 

 the mode of giving patents. " I know of existing patents 

 which are but old inventions as old as the hills." 



Another objection is that so few are remunerative. We 

 need not answer this. With such laws it requires great 

 power to fight your way. Inventors are not rich men, and 

 the power of wealth and legislation may crush them still 

 further. If lawyers were to invent such laws as would pro- 

 tect these men the generation would bless them, and true in- 

 vention would increase. 



Mr. Richard Roberts is quoted as saying that a quart of 

 ale will bring out secrets of trade, so impossible is it to keep 

 a process without a patent. We know that the system of 

 bribery is common enough. There are men who have 

 laboured for years, and discovered something, and desire to 

 give it to their children. When it can be carried on by one 

 man he will, have no patent. There is even one business 

 which has had a secret for three generations. If patents 

 are not given men will resort to this mode of secrecy, as 

 they do now in Prussia. In that country patents are so few 

 that it seems the belief that only bribery or friendship can 

 gain one, and works are closed up to visitors to a great 

 extent. We cannot doubt that the till of late slow develop- 

 ment of industry in Germany has been owing to the want of 

 decision in giving patents ; want of openness, and, so far as 

 we can make out from Germans, want of official honesty, 



