46 
EETTS’s PATENT METALLIC CAPSULES. 
Previous to this, however, one or two of the defendants, acting individually, 
had induced Mr. Betts’s solicitor to stop further proceedings against them on 
the payment of sums of money. In one case a widow, fearing the consequences 
of further law proceedings, was glad to compromise her case by the payment of 
£16, although she had never gained as many pence by the capsules she had in¬ 
nocently sold attached to some proprietary articles. In another case, double that 
sum was paid under similar circumstances. At the conferences that took place 
in Bloomsbury Square, the defendants were advised not to settle their cases in 
this way. It was confidently anticipated that Mr. Betts, on learning the cir¬ 
cumstances of the case, as an honest man, would put a stop to such vexatious 
proceedings, and, whatever measures he might cause to be adopted against those 
who, with a guilty knowledge, had infringed his patent, that he would be anxious 
to relieve from further expense and annoyance the mere retail dealers in cap¬ 
suled articles who had never knowingly offended nor practically benefited by the 
‘■offence. The deputation had a long interview with Mr. Betts and the manager 
of his factory, Mr. Cheeseman, but they were greatly disappointed in the re¬ 
sult, which was, that Mr. Betts refused to withdraw proceedings against any of 
>the defendants, unless they consented to condone by the payment in each case of 
a sum of money. In fact it was evident, from what passed at this interview, 
that Mr. Betts’s object was not the prevention of the infringement of his pa- 
dent, but the recovery of the money he had already lost, by levying contribu¬ 
tions from all those who, either knowingly or in ignorance, had rendered them¬ 
selves subject to legal proceedings. Members of the deputation who had pre¬ 
viously been disposed to support Mr. Betts in the vindication of his rights 
were, together with all who became acquainted with the result, highly incensed 
at the disposition he had manifested. 
Mr. Betts having a patent of questionable validity, which had been under 
litigation for many years, with various results, the Court of Queen’s Bench and 
the Court of Exchequer Chamber having pronounced it invalid, and its validity 
at last being^ only affirmed by an appeal to the House of Lords,—having spent 
01 lost £50,000 in these and similar proceedings, he now seeks to reimburse 
lnmself by adopting wholesale proceedings against innocent traders who have 
unwittingly been led into an infraction not of the spirit but of the letter of the 
law. 
Any man may lawfully make, and many do make, metallic capsules which 
cannot be distinguished in appearance from those made under Mr. Betts’s 
patent, especially as Mr. Betts supplies many of his capsules without any dis¬ 
tinguishing mark ; and therefore dealers in capsuled articles have no means of 
ascertaining whether the capsules attached to such articles are of Mr. Betts’s 
manufacture or not. Is it to be tolerated, that a litigious patentee should 
levy black mail” upon the public, by first issuing patented goods with 
no sufficient means of distinguishing them from others with which they are 
brought into competition, then allowing infringers of his patent to stock the 
market with spurious articles made in imitation of his, and finally frightening 
the innocent possessors of these latter articles into the payment of large sums 
o money, by threatening them with expensive, if not ruinous, suits in Chan^ 
eery . lhere are men who spend all their means in a succession of law-suits, 
and who enjoy the luxury of this kind of excitement, but this is an idiosyncrasy 
which is not common among members of the drug-trade. Many an honest 
man would pay a moderate sum, which he felt to be unjustly exacted, rather 
dian get involved m a Chancery suit. But when Chancery suits are insti- 
tuted by wholesale against innocent men, it becomes necessary, in the interests 
Oi the public, to put a stop to such proceedings. 
When it was found that Mr. Betts and his lawyer were serious in their in¬ 
dention to recover damages or composition-money from all the defendants in the 
