The twenty-second session of the Inventors' Institute was opened on
October 27, the chair being taken by Vice-Admiral J.H. Selwyn, one of the
vice-presidents, at the rooms of the institute, Lonsdale Chambers, 27
Chancery Lane, London. The chairman, in delivering the inaugural address,
said that in the absence of their president, the Duke of Manchester, it
became his duty to open the session of 1885. The institute having been
established in 1862, this was their twenty-second anniversary. At the time
of its establishment a greater number of members were rapidly enrolled
than they could now reckon, although a large number had joined since the
commencement of the present year. In 1862 a considerable amount of
enthusiasm on the part of inventors had arisen, from the fact that at that
time the leading journals had advocated the views of certain manufacturers
as to sweeping away the patent laws, enacted anew in 1852, and with them
the sole protection of the inventive talent and industry of the nation.
This naturally caused much excitement and interest among those chiefly
concerned, and a very numerous body of gentlemen associated themselves
together and formed an institute for the purpose mainly of resisting the
aggression and inculcating views more in accordance with true principles,
as well as for explaining what were the true relations of inventive genius
to the welfare of the state. He hoped to be able to show strong reasons
for this action, and for energetically following it up in the future.
Although on that evening there were many visitors present besides the
members of the institute, yet he thought the subject could be shown to be
of such national importance that it might justly engage the attention of
any assembly of Englishmen, to whatever mode of thought they might belong.
The institute had persistently done its work ever since its formation.
Sometimes it had failed to make itself heard, at others it had been more
successful in so doing; but the net result of its labors--and he did not
fear to claim it as mainly due to those labors--had been to propagate and
spread abroad a fact and a feeling entirely opposed to the false doctrines
previously current on the subject, namely, that among our most valuable
laws were those which could excite the intelligence and reward the labors
of the inventors of all nations. There were still those who wished to see
the patent laws swept away, but their numbers had dwindled into a
miserable minority, composed mainly of manufacturers who were so curiously
short-sighted as not to see that all improvement in manufactures must come
from inventive talent, or those who, still more blind, could not perceive
that property created by brains was certainly not a monopoly, and deserves
protection quite as much as any other form of possession, in order that it
may be developed by capital. He need scarcely waste time in pointing out
the fallacy of refusing to pay for the seed corn of industrial pursuits,
for that fallacy, bit by bit, had been completely swept away, and last
year the labors of the institute had been so far crowned with success that
the President of the Board of Trade, in his place in Parliament, announced
his conviction that "inventors were the creators of trade, and ought to be
encouraged and not repressed." Such a conviction, forced home in such a
quarter, ought to have produced a great and beneficial change in the
legislation on the subject, and the hopes of inventors were that this
would surely be the case; but when the bill appeared these hopes were
considerably depressed, and now, after a year's experience of the working
of the changed law, scarcely any benefit appears to have been obtained,
beyond the meager concession that the heavy payments demanded, for an
English patent may be made in installments instead of lump sums. Against
this infinitesimal concession had to be set a number of disabilities which
did not formerly exist, such as compulsory licenses, which disinclined the
capitalist to invest in inventions, attempts to assimilate the provisional
specification to the complete, or to restrict the latter within the terms
of the former, attempts to separate the parts of an invention, and thus
increase the number of patents required to protect it, and many other
minor annoyances which would take too much time to explain fully. It was
true that there was some extension of the time for payment--some such
locus penitentiæ as would be accorded to any debtor by any creditor in the
hope of getting the assets; but the promised spirit of encouragement to
inventors was not to be found in the bill; it was still a boon which must
be earnestly sought by the institute.
He had said that the concessions granted were almost infinitesimal, yet a
result had been obtained, surprisingly confirmatory of the views always
advocated by the institute as to the potentiality of the inventive talent
of this nation were it released from its shackles. While in former years
the highest number of patents taken out had slowly risen to the number of
five to six thousand per annum, in the year now expiring it had bounded to
more than three times five thousand--had at one leap reached an equality
with the patents of the United States, where only £4 ($20) was paid for a
patent for seventeen years, instead of £175, as in Great Britain, for a
term of fourteen years. If in the future we could hope to persuade the
legislators to be content with no heavier tax than in the United States
had yielded a heavy surplus over expenses of a well-conducted Patent
Office, he did not fear to assert that the number of patents taken out in
this country would again be trebled, and that trade and industry would be
correspondingly animated and developed. The result of the wiser patent law
of the United States had been to flood our markets with well-manufactured
yet cheap articles from that country which might have been equally well
made by our artisans at home had invention not been subject to such heavy
restrictions, and had technical skill been equally sure of its reward.
The business of the institute in the future was not to rest satisfied with
the proposition of Mr. Chamberlain, but to lead him or his successors
forward by logical and legitimate means toward the necessary corollary of
that proposition. If inventors were indeed the creators of trade, then the
President of the Board of Trade was bound to see, not only that they were
not prevented from creating trade, but that they received every facility
in performing their work. Hence all exertions should be used to convince
the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a less tax may produce a greater
income: to persuade the legal authorities that this description of
property, of all others, most deserves the protection of the law.
Inherited direct from the Giver of all good gifts, no person had been
dispossessed of anything he previously owned, and the wealth of humanity
might be indefinitely increased by means of it. Not many mighty, not many
noble, received this gift, but it was the inexhaustible heritage of the
humble, it was the rich reward of the intelligent of all races that
peopled the earth. To whomsoever given, this gift was intended to
contribute to the health and the wealth of the human race, for the
bringing into existence new products, for their utilization for the
encouragement of the general intelligence of the nations, and for the
lightening of the burdens of the poor. It would also cause technical
education to be more highly valued as a means to an end--for true
inventive genius was never so likely to succeed as when it passed from the
summit of the known to the confines of the possible, when, having learnt
and appreciated what predecessors had accomplished, it went earnestly to
work to solve the next problem, to remove the next obstacle on the path
which to them had proved insurmountable.
More beneficial than any other change whatever in our legislation would be
a full and cordial recognition, a complete and efficient protection, of
property created by thought. Then the humblest individual in the land
might have confidence that he could call into existence property not
inferior in value to that of the richest landowner, the most successful
merchant, or the most wealthy manufacturer, in the whole world. As an
instance of this Admiral Selwyn mentioned two prominent cases arising out
of the pursuit of two widely differing branches of knowledge, in the one
case by an outsider, in the other by a specialist. He referred to Sir H.
Bessemer, one of his valued colleagues in the vice-presidency of the
institute, and Mr. Perkins, the discoverer of aniline dyes. In each of
these instances, whatever might have been the results to the inventors,
and he hoped they had been satisfactory, a sum which might be estimated at
twenty millions sterling annually, constantly on the increase, and never
before existing, had been added to the income-tax-paying wealth of the
country. With such a result arising from the development of only two
inventions, he thought it would be seen that he must be a most ignorant,
foolish, or obstinate Chancellor of the Exchequer who would refuse to
allow such property to be created by requiring heavy preliminary payments,
or in any way discourage or fail to encourage to the utmost of his power
the creation of property which was capable of producing such a result--a
result which he would in vain seek for did he rely on landed property
alone, since this, in the hands of whomsoever it might be, never could
largely increase in extent, and was subject at this moment to serious
depreciation in tax-paying power.
The exertion of intelligence, combined with a sense of security in its
pecuniary results, was in itself opposed to loose notions of proprietary
rights, and tended to diminish that coveting of neighbors' goods which was
the fertile source of vice and crime, and which was capable of breaking
down the strongest and most wealthy community if indulged, till at last
society was resolved into its elements, and when nothing else was left as
property, man, the savage, coveted the scalp of his fellow man, and
triumphed over a lock of hair torn from his bleeding skull.
Invention was an ennobling pursuit, and was, even among those who were not
also handworkers, a means of employment which never left dull or idle
hours, while to the handworker it meant more, for it offered the most
ready means of rising among his fellows, and, where invention received
proper protection, of securing a competence for old age or ill health. Not
only, as he had before said, did the results of invention cause no loss to
any other individual, unless by displacing inferior methods of working,
but in most instances some distinct benefit arose to the whole human race,
and unless this was the case the patented invention failed to obtain
recognition, soon died out, and left the field clear for others to occupy.
He regretted that so few results had been obtained from the Patent Bill of
last year, but he would briefly refer to some of the changes thought
desirable by inventors and by the council of the institute.
No one could deem it desirable, it could scarcely be thought reasonable,
that an Englishman who was called upon to pay in the United States £7 for
a valid patent for seventeen years should be still obliged in his own
country to pay £175 for a less term of a patent which does not convey
anything but a right to go to law. It was also not reasonable to pretend
by a deed to convey a proprietary right while reserving the power to grant
compulsory licenses, which must tend to destroy the value of such
proprietary right.
It was a reproach to legislative perspicacity that the grantee of a patent
should be obliged to accept the view of the state, the grantor, as to the
value of the invention to the nation, and also that any other method of
proceeding to upset a patent, once granted, should be allowed than a suit
for revocation to the crown, on the ground of error, such revocation if
obtained not to prejudice the granting anew, with the old date, of a valid
patent for the parts of the invention which are not proved to be
anticipated at the trial. There are many other points which could not be
referred to on the present occasion, but he might say that the duty of the
council would be to press them forward until the capitalist could consider
patented property at least as sound an investment as any other. So might
the wealth of the nation be largely increased, and the sense of justice
between man and man be more fully inculcated. In the United States
inventors were able at once to secure the favorable attention of
capitalists, because there the whole business of the Patent Office was to
assist the inventor to obtain a valid--and, as far as possible, an
indisputable--patent.
Even so small an article as a pair of pliers, one of the most familiar of
tools, had been proved to be capable of patented improvement. Formerly
these were always made to open and close at an angle which precluded their
holding any object grasped by them with the desirable rigidity. A clever
workman invented a means of producing this effect by the application of a
parallel motion. He probably went to the office at Washington, was
referred to a certain room in a certain corridor, and there found a
gentleman whose business it was to know all about the patents for such
tools. By his aid he eliminated from his patent all anticipatory matter,
and issued from the office with a valid patent, which, developed by
capital, had supplied all the trades which employ such instruments with a
better means of accomplishing their work, had employed capital and labor
with remunerative results in producing the pliers, and had added one more
to the little things which create trade for his country.
This was a typical instance of the way in which invention was encouraged
in America. Why should it be otherwise here? For many years literary
property had received a protection which was yet to be desired for
patented invention. Not only for fourteen years, but for the duration of a
man's life, was that kind of brain property protected, and even after his
death his heirs still continued to derive benefit from it. Should a
romance or a poem be deemed more worthy of reward than the labors of those
inventors to whom he had referred, and which certainly produced far
greater and more abiding advantage to the nation? To secure a due
appreciation of the whole importance of invention, no other means could be
adopted than that which the institute had been formed to secure, namely,
the union of inventors, not only of one nation, but of the whole world.
The international character of the subject had been recognized by the
institute, and they had never neglected any opportunities of pressing that
view of the subject, which had at last obtained some recognition from our
government.
No great result could, however, be expected from a congress where
inventors, not lawyers or patent agents, still less officials trained in a
vicious routine, formed the majority. It might be hoped that next year
there would arise an opportunity for such a congress, and that the
institute would do its best to improve the occasion. There never had been
a time when England more required the creation of new industries. Our
agriculturists had signally failed to hold their own in the face of
unlimited competition, and the food of the nation no longer came from
within. But if that were the case, then some means must be found of paying
for the food imported from abroad, and this could only be done by constant
improvement in manufactures, or some change by which we might sell some of
our other productions at a profit if the food could not be produced but at
a loss. Here invention might fitly be called to aid, but could only
respond if all restrictions were removed and every facility granted.
Capital must be induced to consider that home investments are more
remunerative and not less secure than any others, and this could only be
done by adding to the security of the property proposed for investment. He
had referred to the unlimited nature of the property created by invention,
and they would infer that if properly protected there was equally no limit
to the capital that could be profitably employed in developing such
property. The institute did not exist solely or even mainly for the
purpose of advocating the claims of inventors to consideration, either
individually or collectively, but for the great object of forcing home
upon the convictions of the people the fact that at the very foundation of
the wealth and prosperity of every nation lies the intelligence, the
skill, the honesty, and the self-denial of its sons.
If, when these were exercised, for want of wise legislation such virtues
failed to secure their due reward, they sought a more genial clime, and
that nation which had undervalued them sank to rise no more; or, if the
error were acknowledged, and too late the course was reversed, found
itself already outstripped in the race of progress, and could slowly, if
ever, regain its lost position. Finally he urged the inventors of England
to rally round the institution in all their strength, and thus secure the
objects of which he had striven, however feebly, to point out the
importance. If they did so, this institution would take a rank second to
no other in the empire: and while acknowledging that the interests of the
inventor must always be subordinate to the welfare of the state, he
asserted that the two were inseparable, and that in no other way could the
latter and principal result be so completely secured as by according a due
consideration to the former.
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