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The Green Bag

tion which contributes little to the theory of national origins, but in the realm of international relations in an era of civilization, it is a living reality, and the court of nations must be founded on the principle of international com pact and in no other way can it come into being. Nothing short of a flexible system, in the light of these considera tions, is practicable.8 der Haager Konferenzen" has come to hand. The author of this book maintains that a World
 * Since the foregoing was written, Professor Hershey's notice of Schilcking's "Der Staatenverband

The Patent System

Confederacy was established ipso facto by the first Hague Conference, a conclusion which can evidently be accepted if the word "confederacy" be given an elastic sense. Schiicking proposes that this incipient World Confederacy, which has begun purely as an organization for the administration of justice, shall next proceed to organize periodical conferences at the Hague under the terms of a statute which could be adopted at the third Con ference. Even if this be accomplished, it will still be a long step forward from World Confederation to World Union, namely from an international tri bunal the authority of which may be acknowledged or repudiated at pleasure by independent units composing the confederacy, to an international court the authority of which would be sustained by the collective will of a united community from which it would be impossible for any state to secede. (See 7 American Political Science Review 158, Feb. 1913.)

Defended in Congress

By Gilbert H. Montague of the New York City Bar

CONGRESSMAN Oldfield, when re porting from the House Patent Committee last August his bill to re vise the patent laws, declared that the committee's purpose was to "give the people of the country the opportunity to see what is provided for in the bill, and ascertain what is the sentiment of the country upon the proposal." The storm of protest against the Oldfield bill that immediately arose throughout the country unmistakably showed that the sentiment of the country was against the proposal. The "minority views," submitted by six out of fourteen mem bers of the House Patent Committee just before the close of the session, show that defenders against the assault upon the patent system are not lacking in the House Patent Committee itself. How completely the minority of the House Patent Committee — which lacks but one of being half of the entire com

mittee — shatter the claims and preten sions upon which the Oldfield Bill rests can be appreciated only by reading their views as submitted to Congress. Four teen pages long, hardly half the length of the report with which Congressman Oldfield bolstered his bill, these "mi nority views" constitute the tersest and most incisive analysis of the patent sit uation that has yet appeared. At the outset, the minority state that in the twenty-seven public hearings upon the Oldfield bill, not a specific instance was cited to support the asser tion that many patents are bought up for the mere purpose of suppressing competition. Even the decisions of the federal courts, upon which the majority report relied, are shown upon analysis to disprove this contention. "If the practice of buying up patents for the purpose of extinction is as prevalent and as harmful as the majority con