The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-01-03

large amount of money and time IN IN
venting your patent, you place the price
of it to the public at a figure which
Will, you think, reimburse you for your
expenditure. The infringer does not
have to meet any. of these expenditures,
and can, therefore, afford TO sell far
below your price. A lawsuit for you is
a costly matter; for him it is compar-
atively trifie For instance, in order
to prove your patents you have got TO
make researches, you have got to have
expert drawings made, and there are
numberless other expenses which eat up
profits. All the infringer has to do
is TO employ a lawyer who is noted for
causing delays in court. Every time
your case comes UP he will attempt to
delay it, and generally will succeed.
Meantime you are manufacturing al
loss, while the infringer is manufac-
turing at a profit.
COURT FAVORS YOUR CASE.
IF, after five or six years. you prove
to the court that you are rightfully en-
titled to the invention, there is but one
thing left to you-to attack your OPP
ponent's factory. At this point you
will awake TO the fact that he has no
factory. You will find that the ma
chnery has been rented, or else it is
in the name of his wife, or that he has
an irresponsible company made up of
his employees or Of his family, and
when finally you swoop down upon him,
all you can find in his office is desk
and a chair He can still run the shop
machinery and give more trouble, and
in the end there is not only no reward
for the inventor, but absolute loss. 1t
takes time to pioneer all new things.
After you talk to the public, other peo-
pie see that you have a good thing, and
organize irresponsible factories. You
have, perhaps, spent 100000 for ma
chinery, tools, etc, when along comes
the other fellow without any response
bility and makes all the money he can
before you are able to get judgment
against him.
Two men come into the United
States court. One has patent, pre-
sumably he is the original inventor.
Both have different tale to tell. The
presumed owner says: We are in Gti-
cation. l have a patent. We are both
making the article, and l want an in
Junction But the court will not give
the injunction. No. they say, we will
let him go ahead. We don't care any
thing about the patent. When we de-
eide, it will be on its merits That is
generally six, seven or eight years af-
terward, when the inventor has lost
everything.
The laws are all right, and don't
need revision; it is not the laws. The
patent office is all right, too. There
is no corruption there. 1t all lies with
the power and practice of the United
States supreme court Years ago they
would grant an injunction on the face
of the patent. The patentee had better
rights. Now they don't, and that is
what is driving every good man out of
the business, or driving him into de-
tails, because they are safe. If you
get up a wrench, there is not the dan
ser of another man coming in and
spending $1,000 or $500, 900 fighting you
on a thing which don't pay you $1,000.
F OPERATION OF PATENT SHARKS.
1.-The operations of patent sharks
sometimes compel an inventor to obtain
patents for articles which are never
meant to be placed on the market. A
fellow often gets up machine, and
somebody else comes along, and, by
getting patents through for certain
parts. can give the inventor a great
deal of bother and make him pay well,
even if the inventor gets control of it.
A man ought to patent every part of
his machine which he intends to use
so that he will have bona fide claim
to use it and cannot be infringed by
other inventors The inventor should
first patent the principal parts and i'm
provements, then patent the variations