Reform of the British Patent System¹

Abstract

THE recent publication of the Report of the Committee which was appointed by the British Science Guild in April of last year to consider what changes could advantageously be made in the patent law of Great Britain, will of necessity rivet the attention of all those who appreciate the very important part which a sound system of monopoly grants in respect of new inventions can achieve in encouraging progress in industrial development. The days are long past when the desirability of granting patents for inventions was regarded as a debatable matter, and the abolition of patents was advocated by quite responsible schools of opinion as being one step in the direction of freeing trade and industry from all those trammels and obstacles that hinder full development. More and more we have come to recognise that the well-being of a modern industrialised State depends on the continuous and intensive concentration of the most original and creative minds upon the task of increasing the efficiency of human labour, that is to say, in enabling more wealth to be produced or more services to be rendered by a given expenditure of human effort.