520 
Product  Patents. 
Am,  Jour.  Pharm. 
July,  1 918. 
to  his  new  article  in  the  way  of  a  fabric.  It  is  not  good  equity ;  and 
moreover  it  is  not  good  sense.  The  object  of  the  patent  laws  is  to 
promote  the  progress  of  science  and  the  useful  arts,  and  that  they 
have  fulfilled  their  mission  is  beyond  a  peradventure.  Why  stop 
now  and  stop  in  a  single  science?  For  125  years  (to  be  exact,  since 
February  21,  1793)  the  chemist  has  been  as  much  entitled  to  look 
forward  for  reward  for  what  he  did  as  anybody  else ;  he  read  his 
title  just  as  clear  as  did  the  machinist.  Maybe  I  am  biased,  and 
very  likely  I  am,  but  I  can't,  for  the  life  of  me,  see  wherein  there  is 
any  legal  or  equitable  difference  between  the  standing  of  the  chap 
who  puts  together  an  alkyl  radical  and  an  aryl  radical  to  make  a  new 
drug  or  a  new  dye  and  the  man  who  puts  together  levers  and  keys 
to  make  a  new  typewriter.  That  the  product  of  one  is  sold  in  a 
bottle  and  the  product  of  the  other  in  a  box  is  not  material.  Any 
argument  that  seeks  to  discriminate  between  them  is  as  lopsided 
as  a  crane ;  and  I  don't  like  being  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  lop.  It 
is  at  least  as  much  an  object  to  the  public  to  encourage  the  chemist 
by  patents  as  it  is  to  encourage  the  machinist.  Both  are  human 
and,  commonly,  poor,  and  neither  is  going  to  strain  his  ingenuity 
working  nights  unless  he  sees  a  patent  ahead. 
Running  through  all  this  "  product  patent "  talk,  like  a  rotten 
streak  in  a  mushy  banana,  is  the  idea  that  the  chemist  who  creates 
a  new  drug  or  dye  that  becomes  a  public  necessity  as  soon  as  its 
creation  and  existence  are  known  to  the  public  is  guilty  of  creating 
public  necessities  to  his  own  profit,  and  he  ought  to  be  discouraged ; 
or  if  he  won't  be,  then  he  should  not  be  allowed  to  make  the  profit — 
which  sounds  like  a  curious  piece  of  mental  perversion,  worthy  of 
the  gentleman  who  habitually  stood  on  his  head  to  peel  the  apple 
dumplings  ;  but  I  am  not  gilding  the  lily  any  in  reproducing  it — far 
from  it ;  I  am  merely  condensing  and  Englishing  certain  actual  argu- 
ments which  have  been  made. 
Washington,  D.  C 
February  18,  1918. 
