The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-28
PETITIONS FOR 2g,OOO PATENTS
 WADE EACH YEAR
ranks And Geniuses Min gle In Scramble To Pro-
 tect New Ideas
Hv HERBERT COREY

ild.eyed men went into the patent ie the other day. Maybe they were
 [ so wild-eyed after all. Commits
 ,ner of Patents Thomas F. Robert n mas his doubts.s But they sound
 ld-eyed. One of them sahh to the
 mnissioner:
 Shake hands with the King of In-
 ltofs."
 So Mir. Robertson shook hands with
 king. He has met kings before.
 ay sdo not annoy him at all. He,
 nteil to know what the king had up
 sleeve.
 The King ,of Inventors" vocifer-
 his cicerone, 7"has invented per-
 ual motion machine. It works, sir!
 works P
 Told To Produce Machine
 Hcicerone said the king had all
 wings with him. He produced
 uSas a stage entertainer does rab
 and waved them at the commis-
 en He said he would like to have
 .,atent right away. His machine ,as wonderful Mir. Robertson said You must file the machine with us be- ore we can issue q patent. Not working model. Not drawings. A regu- ar, perpetual motion machine, that eill go on perpetuating: We are, not put fine point on it, fed up with rawlings of perpetual motion. We ,ant to see the machine
 Wasn't that a dirty trick to play pon ,a king? Streams of inventors i've ballyhooed into the patent office ith drawings of perpetual motion ma ines, and made a grating sound with cir hOb-nails on their indignant way because of that rule. They usually the patent cOmmissioner-whoev current commissioner may be-is
 ing. to stamp inventive genius down
 I the dust. Or else they blame it on
 fmoney power. But not one of them
 come back with the machine.
 Protection From Grafters
 Rome of them" said Mir. Robertson, Jay he. on the track of sort of per tual motion after all. Motion run ng from the pockets of suckers into lose of grafters. That's why I say ey are not all so wild-eyed as they fight, seem to be. Perpetual motion achines and those other little jiggers ( which you can run an automobile for hours on a nicke's' worth of moth balls usually have something that is not shown in the drawings. Something like small motor. Or hidden pump" The rest of us are mostly on the level. l said the rest of us, for we are beyond "a doubt the most inventive na- ton in the world. The figures prove it. With only one-sixteenth the popula- tiQn of the world, one-half the worlds patents have beeif issued in the United Statesl In the last ten years. if you llow for the inroads of immigration U1< n fhn lc Of nI1,, person in each enc hundred and fifty, women, children, and slick haired young men who help old ladies do their denciHg being included, has asked that Hsspatent be granted on some device or ofher. When you think how many of as there are w6o have not asked M 5000 Applications In Year
 have three or four mighty valuable Inventions up my sleeve right now. So have you. So has every other person I D6p WheneveE some new scheme for beating second-bahd gold toothpickS 5nto. spark plugs comes out three or four of our nearest and dearest are sure ~ say that they thought of that years ngo. Eighty thousand of us asked for patents last year and forty thousand ii us got them.
 American patents really mean some xhing, to-. Since 1886 the patent of Nce has made careful search of all vailable records before issuing the pat ent. Great Britain and Germany did %ot institute the search plan until ,mparatively recently. France does tt search even yet If you ask for tent in France you get it, but it only cans that you have placed on record
 assertion of priority. There may be 'ty similar assertions already on rec ord. You find out what's what after you begin manufacturing your self cooking hairpin.
 Couldn't Keep Up With Work
 For all that, we are not as fatherly In our treatment of inventors as we might be. For years the patent office was permitted to run behind. When you consider that sthe pre-eminence of the United States in many lines of
 'mercial endeavor is to be traced
 to her. inventors it seems rather
 There was shortage of man. yer in it and an apparent paucity of stem. At the beginning of, the Har- ng administra tion the patent office as 10000 cases behind and running ore behind each day. Then every in- entor in the country removed his at- sntion from the war, except those that ere devising peace, plans, and began invent overtime. Pretty soon the ltent office was 10000 cases behind Id dropping behind faster.
 Last year Congress added S5 more lnfinefs and clerks to the force. and bill has passed the House and is waiting action in the Senate adding co more. Meanwhile Mir. Robertson, 'ho became commissioner of patents in t921, after thirty years spent in Wash ington as a patent attorney, crashed through lot of lovely old methods.
 Gaining On Hold-Over Cases Relieved of this handicap his force Tsl,000 cases awaiting action. In the three months they took in the slack by i2.O35 cases. They are now gaining on the hold-overs at the rate of 1000 cases each month. But with 1000 new ap- plications reaching the office each go days
 It will .taket the patent office just about five yearszsto get even. That's a pretty hOwdy-do. Five years of chills and fever for all us inventors between lie date of application and the iss,l- nee of patents., No wonder we are alied neurasthenic nation.
 Once in while a case is put for ward. Not often. It is against the jules fof the office, but rules yield iowzdays to common sense. Here is an xample. About the time ,that Secre- Mfy Hoover was holding his conference fh unemployment-when 5,0O0, 900 men were out of work--a Chicago manufac- ifer came to the patent office. He lid he wanted a patent issued at once O he could get to work.
 X. Nothing doing" said Commissioners Robertson.