The Future of the British Patent Office

Abstract

THE burden of Mr. Wyndham Hulme's letter (NATURE of September 5) is that, as regards basic principles in the granting of patents for inventions, there should be a reversion to the principles which obtained during Elizabethan and early Jacobean times, and that in every particular Patent law should be made subservient to the successful establishment of industries in Great Britain. Thus although a “manufacture” might have already been known, yet if it had not been reduced to practice, a valid patent should be obtainable by anyone who was the first to put the “manufacture” into practice. Further, Mr. Hulme contends that, if novelty is to be the test for validity of a patent, it is practically impossible for a thorough search to be made by a body of officials, and that since an administrative search for novelty has long been an economic absurdity, the growth of British industry should be stimulated by a relief of the patentee from an unduly high legal standard of novelty.