Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 25.pdf/460

 Patents and Modern Industry to trust is never made against it. That is the important thing; all else are merely curios gathered on the voyage.

433

Its members have charity, too, for they do not question the clean right of the stone throwers, as perhaps they might.

Patents and Modern Industrial Conditions1 By Frederick P. Fish OF THE BOSTON BAR NO form of reward so fits the achieve quate patent system gives to the inven ment, is so productive of advan tor, who as a rule never could himself do tage to the community, and is attended anything with his invention, something by so few disadvantages as the grant that is tangible and of value, which he to an inventor of a monopoly of his can transfer, in whole or in part, to the invention for a limited time. While business enterprises which alone can many other forms of reward have been make the invention of value to the com suggested (such suggestions were made munity. Inventors, and business men at the convention which adopted our who develop inventions and introduce national constitution), they have no them to the service of man, to exactly where been adopted as part of the the same degree and for the same rea machinery of society. Everywhere some son are stimulated by the protection form of exclusive control for a limited afforded by a patent, to efforts which time has been recognized as the best they would never otherwise make. Each class would be helpless without the other. way of dealing with the matter. It is only when both are encouraged and The encouragement of patent pro tection does not alone stimulate the protected, as they are by the grant of a inventor to intellectual effort; it excites patent, that the progress of the useful to strenuous effort a long line of inter arts is promoted. Even if the invention mediaries, capitalists, investors, busi meets a real demand, there is frequently ness administrators, licensees and users the opportunity and occasion for the who work with or under the patent expenditure of a vast amount of money and of the greatest intelligence and and whose co-operation is vitally neces sary that the invention may not be energy on the part of those who are confined to a paper description, but may introducing it into use before commer actually get into use. cial success can be attained and always there is the chance of utter Inventors Helpless Without Patents failure. Nowhere can it be worth while to invent, unless there is opportunity for utilizing inventions if made. An ade-

1 Abstract of address delivered September 2, 1913, before the American Bar Association at Montreal.

Superiority of American Patent System The standards and rules imposed by foreign patent laws as to working inven tions, and as to the grant of compul sory licenses, are and must be purely arbitrary. No man who is inclined to