264 Patent-Right and Patent-Law. [May, 
be inevitably forfeited unless in full action within this short 
term, the present reluctance to come to terms with the 
patentee would be very much strengthened. But the fol- 
lowing stipulation might form part and parcel of our Patent- 
law : — “ That if any person holding a Patent for the United 
Kingdom and for some foreign country shall work the said 
Patent abroad, but shall refuse either to work the same on 
a practical scale in the United Kingdom or to grant licenses 
to others on equitable terms, the Patent-right of such person 
shall lapse accordingly.” This clause would, I think, effectu- 
ally bar the door against the abuses to which the Society of 
Chemical Industry has so opportunely called attention. 
It may be urged that foreign powers would in retaliation 
refuse to grant Patents to British inventors. I reply — Some 
States, such as Austria, France, and Belgium, already re- 
quire as an essential condition for the maintenance of a 
Patent that it shall be worked within their respective terri- 
tories. In other cases such a retaliatory movement might 
be met by treating any article patented in the United King- 
dom but made abroad as contraband. 
An objection has been widely raised against our present 
system of granting Patents to all applicants without any 
examination as to their novelty. This evil undeniably exists. 
Over and over again I have met with Patents claiming anew, 
and sometimes, totidem verbis, what has been previously 
claimed in older Patents, whether lapsed or still valid. 
French inventors seem to me particularly liable to fall into 
this error. Such re-patenting should certainly be brought 
to an end. To grant such a Patent is unjust to the second 
applicant, and, under certain circumstances, still more unjust 
to the public. The judges unfortunately, perhaps from their 
limited acquaintance with technical questions, show a cer- 
tain degree of timidity in dealing with such re-patenters, 
who are thus sometimes enabled to blackmail the manufac- 
turers for working a process which has long been in reality 
public property. It is satisfactory that the Patent Bill of 
the present Government proposes to submit all applications 
for Patents to the scrutiny of examiners better qualified for 
the task than the law-advisers of the Crown. 
A defect in the present law is that Patents are granted for 
medicines, for articles of food and drink, and substitutes for 
such articles. An open door is thus provided by the State 
for quackery, for fraud, and adulteration. It has been sug- 
gested that were these articles, as in Germany, excluded 
from the protection of the Patent-law, and if the proprietors 
were debarred from bringing suits for libel, slander, or 
