436 
Patents, 
but I apprehend it is a doctrine, which must be received with 
some modifications in the present day. 
For instance: could a patent have been supported in England, 
for the precise mode of bleaching by means of the oxymuriatic 
acid which every chemist in England Was well acquainted with 
by the instructions of Berthollet ? 
Could any person in this country take out a patent for those 
inventions of Watt, that are included in his specification, when 
that specification is given at length in the reported cases of Boul- 
ton and Watt against Bull, and Hornblower against Boulton and 
Watt, and in the Repertory of arts ? 
The Repertory of Arts, the Philosophical Journals of Nichol- 
son and Tilloch, the Magazines and Encyclopaedias, of England, 
are books containing many english and continental inventions : 
they are books far from being uncommon in this country : they 
are open to all readers who will procure them : is it reasonable 
that a patent should be supported for any of the inventions describ- 
ed to the world and published for common benefit in either of 
these, or similar publications, in our own language ? 
If a patent be taken out, for an invention described in books 
known generally to scientific readers, I apprehend there is no 
sufficient reason to support it: the discovery is made and present- 
ed to the public, and belongs to the public : but if a process or 
method, or machine, or manufacture, not described in any book, 
be used in England or on the continent of Europe, and imported 
hither, there seems to be good reason for granting a patent right 
for its introduction. 
So, though it were published in the French, German, Swedish, 
or Russian languages only : for at the present day, these languages, 
and the books published therein (French perhaps excepted*) are 
not commonly known even to scientific men in England or this 
country. If it be said, this would establish a fluctuating rule, I 
acknowledge it ; but I contend that the rule ought reasonably to 
fluctuate with the advancements of science, and the facilities of ^ 
scientific communication. 
lOthly. I do not find it any where determined, that the ma- 
nufacture, engine, machine, method, process or principle for 
which a patent is takent out, should be in actual use and opera- 
*■ I doubt whether the Annals de Chlnile, the Journal de Rozier, the Joiiiv 
nal des Mines, the Memoires D’Arcueil, the Reports of the National InstitutCa 
are sufficiently common, for my isemarks to apply to them. 
