The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-11-02 00:00:00

PATENTS AND PATENTEES.

In noticing the recent registration of several patents in con-
nection with Electric Lighting, the Daily News of Wednesday,
under the above title has a most interesting article, from
which we make the following extracts :

"The rate at which petitions for provisional protec-
tion of new modes of lighting by electricity are just
now pouring into our Patent Office indicates very
clearly the approach of one of those inventing manias
among the ingenious and the uningenious—the practical
and the unpractical—of which the books of the gloomy
pile of stone buildings just out of Chancery-lane record
so many examples. Sewing machines, reaping and
mowing contrivances, paper boxes, stoppered bottles,
screw propellers, and numerous other articlts have in
their turn monopolised the busy brains of the race of
pale, restless men who are always poring over the books
in the library upstairs, or hanging, feebly gesticulating
and muttering to the aiselves, about the draughty lobbies
of that place of dreams. It is now the turn of carbon
points and their substitutes, together with insulating
substances and magneto-electric machines.

"The electric light patent movement will be unlike
all other excitements of the kind if the inventions
concerning which so many gentlemen are just now
depositing specifications should ultimately yield any
very large proportion of really new and useful ideas.
This is a field which, unlike that of the trifling me-
chanical contrivance just referred to, necessarily
demands habits of methodical investigation and no
small amount of scientific training. On the other
hand, patent manias rarely fail to leave some valuable
results; and the circumstance that patent fees are
devoted partly to the maintenance of the Patent
Office, with its costly and extensive library, open
without ticket or introduction to all corners, and partly
to the purposes of Imperial taxation, &fords some
ground for satisfaction. Daring last year alone
there were nearly 5,000 applications, and there was
paid in fees no less an amount than £168,197. Nearly
£24,000 of this sum was spent in salaries of the officials
employed; but there was on the whole a net surplus
income of £138,523. How the passion for patenting
grows by what it feeds on may be seen from the fact
that twenty years ago the annual surplus was only
£30,000. Of late it has increased at the rate of over
£20,000 per annum. It is significant that of the total
amount of fees last year no less than £91,210 were paid
for that first stage of the patentee's progress which
must be completed within six months, under the
penalty of seeing the patent lapse altogether. For
the benefit of readers not versed in the details of
Patent Office practice, it may be well to explain
that the first step towards obtaining a patent is to
deposit a printed form, called a petition, with a pro-
visional specification describing, not fully, but still
with some exactness, the object and nature of the in-
vention. This is what Mr. Edison must have done the
other day in the case of his electric light inventions;
and his numerous rivals have necessarily done the
same. With the exception of the title, however, the
Commissioners treat the deposit as a private commu-
nication until six months have expired, whereupon it
is published to the world. Upon such an application,
with payment of £5, provisional protection is
granted almost as a matter of course. Although,
strictly speaking, it is not priority in obtaining
provisional protection, but priority in obtaining
letters patent bearing the great seal—an object of
superstitious reverence composed of primrose-coloured
wax and about the size and shape of a very large sun-
flower—which secures an inventor against pirates and
imitators, yet after the former step is gained it is his
own fault if he is in any danger. He has only to give
what is called 'notice to proceed,'—and if the in-
vention is bon& fide and valuable, it would be gross
negligence on his part, or on that of his agent, to
neglect to do so—and thenceforth he may, without
fear, exhibit his invention to the world. The
reason of this is, that as the great seal can only be
obtained after certain appointed stages of pro-
cedure, of which the steps referred to form part, the
original applicant is thereupon in such a position that
no rival can possibly outstrip him in the race unless he
chooses to allow him. Every step that applicant takes
is, for obvious reasons, publicly recorded at the Patent
Office, and published in the official journal issued
twice a week; and there is always, under the condi-
tions described, abundance of time to move further if
daring the six months anyone else is found pro-
ceeding with like vigour in respect of the same
kind of invention. These are the reasons why it
is customary to assume that patent rights not
only begin (as is the fact) from the day—indeed from
the very moment—of deposit of the original appli-
cation, but are practically secured, if they are really
of any' value, by that step; indeed, it is obvious
that otherwise provisional protection would be
only a snare. The great seal, we may observe,
must be obtained and a final specification—gene-
rally accompanied with drawings—must be depo-
sited within six months. The fees exclusively
payable to this point amount to £25, and the
above sum of £91,210 is entirely composed of these
particular fees. The result so far is that with-
out further payment the patentee is protected for three
years, though this is of course conditional upon the
fact of the invention being really novel, The soundest
of patents and the freshest of ideas may have, and con-
stantly do have, to be defended in courts of law at
enormous expense; and it is needless to say that if any
one, knowingly or unknowingly, obtains migrant under
the Great Seal in respect of anything already the sub.
ject of patent rights, or otherwise not his own, the re-
sponsibility rests with the patentee.
"it is observable that more than three-fifths of
those who obtain provisional protection follow up
that step by completing this first stage. The end of
three years, however, at which period each one must I
make up his mind whether it is worth his while to pay
a £5O fee for an extension of time—generally exhibits a
considerable abatement of the inventor's ardour.
The third year's stamp duty was for example paid
last year only on 944 patents. Still further falling
off is exhibited when the question whether it is
expedient to pay an additional fee of £lOO for a
further seven years (making the full fourteen years'
term allowed by our law) has to be decided. This
Is shown by the fact that the total of patents on
which the seventh year's stamp duty was paid last
year was 280 only. It will be perceived that these
represent the result of what may be called the final
winnowing. They are, in fact, all that remain
of between 4,000 and 5,000 patents first provisionally
protected seven years previously, which the inventors
themselves, after this am pie experience, considered worth
£lOO. At all events, in the case cited no one was evi-
dently forthceming who could be induced to give that
sum to prevent their lapsing. All the rest had been per-
mitted to die a quiet death, and it is to be feared that
they deserved no better fate. btill, it is some conso-
lation in the face of the vexatious and admitted in-
tonveniences of the patent system that it should yield
annually even 280 inventions and discoveries which
must almost of necessity be really novel and ingenious,
and which are certainly worth something; for in seven
years more all them too will be publioprOperty, together