The Washington herald., 1913-12-19
Patents and Monopoly.

that Congress shall nave power &c
promote the progress of science and
useful arts by securing for limited
times to authors and inventors the ex-
elusive right to their respective writ
ings and discoveries" There can be
no doubt but that this provision is
from a social Iyandpoint desirable. The
idealists of our society-those who
ease the hardship of manual labor by
mechanical devices, those who bind
the world together with systems of
transportation and communication,
those who write our literature-these
idesiists deserve the protection of our
laws. In the stress of competition
thsy would not be able without our
patent laws to protect themselves from
the wolves of the business world.
While our great inventors and writers
do not find their stimuli in the Pc
cuniary rewards which they may re-
ceive, they nevertheless, are worthy of
their hire and they would not get it
without the assistance afforded by our
copyrighted and patent statutes.
New conditions have brought new
problems. Under the vast systems of
financing of this day the benefits of
our laws do not accrue in all cases to
the inventor or writer. He frequently
sells his work for mere pittance and
some corporation reaps harvest from
the monopoly which the law gives.
Our patent and copyright laws unques-
tionably need revision. 1t might be too
drastic to provide that any one may
make, use, and sell patented and copy
righted articles provided he pay the
inventor or author a royalty, but it is
at least imperative that the monopolis-
tic control given by our laws be to
some extent restrained.
This control has been limited ma.
terially by several recent decisions of
the United States Supreme Court. In
the Sanatogen case Gag, U. S. -,
which was decided last year. the ques-
ton was raised whether the patentes
by notice may limit the price at which
future retail sales Of the patented ar
tiele may be made, even when that ar
ticle was purchased from a jobber who
paid the agent of the patentee the full
price asked for the article. In this
case the patentee insisted that the re-
tail dealer should sell his article for
a specified price and this the retail
dealer refused to do. The court held
that the patentee could not fix the price
at which the retailer made his sales.
Speaking of the patent and copyright
statutes the court said:
In both instances it was the inten-
ton of Congress TO secure an exclusive
right to sell, and there is no grant
of a privilege to keep up prices and
prevent competition by notices restrict
ing the price at which the article may
be resold. The right to vend conferred
by the patent law has been exercised,
and the added restriction is beyond the
protection and purpose of the act
Even more recently the Supreme
Court handed down a decision which
limits materially the monopolistic eff
fects of the copyright act. In that case
the American Publishers Association
and the American Booksellers Associa-
ton insisted that they had a right to
fix the price at which copyrighted
books are sold by the retailer. This po-
sition was rebutted by one of the
large department stores in New York
City and its contention was upheld b.
the Supreme Court In this case the
court said:
No more than the patent statute was
the copyright act intended to authorize
agreements in unlawful restraint of
trade and tending to monopoly, in vio-
lation of the specific terms of the
Sherman law, which is broadly de-
signed to reach all combinations in un-
lawful restraint of trade and tending
because of the agreements and combi-
nations entered into to build UP and
perpetuate monopolies.