Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-02-01
Our Tottering Patent System
BY Frederic J. Haskin
( T ASHINGTON, D. c., Jan. 27.-It now
" takes an inventor over a year to get

L
is far from affording him the perfect pro-
| lection which 1t is supposed to give. The val
lie Of United States patent is decreasing
year by year.
These are the outstanding facts which
have been presented to congress in connec-
| ton with the patent office bill which is now
| being considered there. They are due to a
small, underpaid force and a consequent labor
turnover which would be ruinous to any
private concern.
| That our patent system is not efficient is
due to no fault of it's employees. 1t is almost
| impossible to get congress to add even a few
more examiners to the staff of the bureau,
though the work is obviously getting heavier
all the time. When an invention is present
| ed to the bureau it is presumed that steps
will be taken to decGe whether it is eligible
for patent And that is what the exam
liners try to decide. But there are more
than 100000 United States patents, and
while these are divided into classes and sub
classes, the work of comparing the new in
vention with all of it's kind is long and ex-
acting job. And, a. the number of patents is
increased by some so, 900 each year, it neces-
sarily takes longer each year to make
| searches or else they must be less thorough
The latter alternative is alone possible be-
cause business brought to the patent office is
steadily on the increase as the inventive gen.
JUS of the most inventive people on earth
lourishes
A Slow System
This is the disheartening situation which
the patent examiners face It n takes at
least a year and a half to put patent
through-the average patent, with no COM
plications. And unless the force working on
patents is increased to meet the heavier
work, and salaries raised sufficiently to at
tract and hold competent men, it will take
longer.
Another result of an inadequate and under
paid patent force is that a United States
patent grant is coming to mean less and less.
One Judge recently told the house patents
committee that patent was not real pro-
lection to the inventor until it had been
through the courts-generally two or more of
them, because the decision of a circuit court
in one section of the country Light not be
upheld by a court governing alother section
In other words, it is almost part of patent
procedure to expect law suit to prove
priority of your invention or that you are
not infringing on some one else's rights.
Patent examiners have never been allowed
to do their work thoroughly, as the law pro-
vides At the very beginning of the system in
1890 the statutes decreed that to be patent
able an invention must not only have been
patented, but it must not have been previous
ly known or used in thi~ country. These last
TWO conditions were rewritten into the patent
examination system in 1886, but they have
never been taken seriously by the overWork-
ed patent office
AS matters stands now, what chance has
an examiner to know if an invention is real
ly new provided it has not been patented by
some one else? All the examiner can do is
to make cursory survey of patents in the
particular class to which the device belongs
to see that the same idea is not embodied
there. He also decides whether theoretical
ly the invention is useful and practical,
though he has no means OF actually seeing IL
work
Patents Often Useless
After the patent is granted, perhaps the
inventor will find that some other company Is
making the same kind of a device without
patent, and if he sues for infringement the
company may be able to prove that 1t had
been making the article for some years be-
fore the patent was granted. The patentee
therefore would probably find that he had
not invented anything original after all, that
his patent was invalid, and that he could not
maintain his exclusive right to make the
article in question. This is why the judge
said no patent is patent until it has been
adjudicated.
Much of this patent litigation could be dis
pensed with, if the patent office was allowed
to work on a more thoroughly systematic
basis For instance, as one examiner points
out it would be quite possible tC comply with
the statute about limiting patents to mVen-
tiOnS that have never been maze or uSeu p6-
fore-that is, to limit patents t. real lnven-
tions He explains that if it were MADE
known that the patent office was keeping
catalogue of unpatented Inventions the man
who produced a new device would be very
ant to send word to the government SO that
the date of his discovery would be ottlclally
recorded Then, in case of an application Tor
q patent on similar invention the existence
of the unpatented article would be known
and some investigation of its status could be
made.
If the examiners had more time they
couId also weed out good inventions from
theoretical nonsense. One patent attorney
saws that four out of five things patented now
are for worse wa of doing something that
is we'll done already. Forty per cent OF
patents applied for are refused because the
principle involved or the method OF applying
the principle is nc new, or because IL IS op-
viouslv impracticable, or because the lnVeh-
ton is of no possible use. But the average
inventor is a gambler, and he wants MS ldea
nrotected even if it has only one chance IN
thousand Of success. And in this he is OFTEN
abetted bv his attorney. There are many pat
emf ATTORNEYS who would frankly tell client
that his idea was not worth protecting. But
+hare are others who promote business by en- !
courag cling the inventor in the belief that MS
discovery is as good as some on when otheI
inventors have made fortunes
One of these inventions of doubtful value
comes to the examiner skilfully Worded by
an attorney so that theoretically it is ellglble
for patent 1t is found to be new, and Wnlle
if NAV not look like a gold mine in disguise
to the examiner, he has no time TO test us
working ability or to compare it with otnef
in