Besides the changes on the law now enumerated, a few additional improvements have occurred to us. 1. The definition of previous public use, which, if proved, shall prevent a patent, ought to be explicitly laid down. This will greatly facilitate the duty of the commissioners, and afford a test of their decisions to the public, too palpable to he concealed.
2. We never could reconcile to justice the principle, that de facto disclosure of the secret of an applicant for a patent, accidental though it be, or even by a malicious enemy, should prevent his patent. If my secret is out, I cannot, it is true, be put in statu quo, and must run a greater risk of infringement than if it were still in my own power. But if I am entitled to recover my property when lost, and still more when I am robbed of it, I am denied justice, if by no wrong of mine, but by accident, or by the fault or the wrong of others, I have been deprived of the property of my secret. I am nevertheless the in ventor, and, as such, entitled to the statutary monopoly; and farther entitled to prosecute all who shall make such use of my secret to which they have no right, as to in fringe my patent. A clause to indemnify from the effects of accidental or malicious disclosure, when established to the satisfaction of the commissioners, would be most desirable.
3. When, under the new law, any person shall prefer a secret manufacture to a patent, he should be entitled to the monopoly of his secret for a certain term of years only, after which he must disclose the secret for the public be nefit, and to prevent the art being lost.
4. The commissioners may be empowered, if they see cause—but this to be entirely in their own discretion—to grant certificates for patents to those who revive lost or forgotten inventions of public utility, which have even been in public use in this empire, if they have long ceased and been forgotten. The public benefit which such per sons confer is certainly equal to that conferred by the im porter from abroad of a useful invention.
5. It is the only way of compensating to patentees, whose term is now running, the bootless expense they have incurred, and the disappointment and vexation they have endured—besides saving the credit of the great seal itself,—to make all current patents absolute and unques tionable, and subject, for the remainder of their respec tive terms, to the new law. The worst conceivable con
sequence of this measure could only be, that some very harmless monopolies, for a few years, would be given of useless articles, and some patents for useful inventions, rashly bestowed on those who did not merit them, might be confirmed; but what is this, an hundred fold repeated, to the evil that one deserving patentee should see all fu ture inventors protected as they ought to be, while he is left to be vexed and plundered under the old regime. Per haps it might be equitable to make the proposed protec tion to current patents, prospective with relation to in fringements. Action of damages or for profits should not be competent for past infringement, unless the action was brought before the passing of the new law ; but injunction or interdict quoad future should be permitted, which would stop all farther infringement, and tie up the hands of all already engaged in infringement.
The following are the advantages which will resealt from the proposed improvements in patent law.
1. The patentee will have an assured and marketable right in return for his labour, ingenuity, and outlay, and that over the whole empire, for an inconsiderable increase of the present expense of a patent for England alone.
2. The country will be put to no additional expense. The government will, nevertheless, have an important means of rewarding men of science. The public will be secured against the practices of dishonest patentees, who, in the present blind mode of granting patents, conceal their processes, and keep back necessary parts of their inventions; and the public will be sure of reaping the full benefit at the end of fourteen years. Valuable processes in the arts, which are now used in secret and kept from the public, nay, often lost to the public, will be disclosed as soon as security by patent can be obtained. Safety and certainty to patents will stimulate invention in this coun try, beyond calculation; still more increase the superiori ty of British over foreign manufactures, and improve the revenue by that superiority, as well as by every new arti cle of luxury and utility brought into the market.