Abstract
WHILE the fifty-third Report of the Comptroller-General of the Patent Office (London: H.M. Stationery Office. 4d. net) is of academic interest as reminding us of the diversity of modern scientific research, its tabular appendixes reveal a gradual change in the destination of patent grants which is of over-riding industrial importance to Great Britain. Of the grants made in 1933, the last year for which final figures are available, 9,000 were made to residents within the British Empire as against 8,100 to foreigners. The figures for applications made during last year show a drop in British applications of six per cent since 1933, while those from outside the Empire have increased more than seven per cent. On this basis, grants made directly to foreigners hi respect of applications made in 1935 will clearly exceed those made to British subjects. When it is realised that 1,796 of the applications made in 1935 by residents in Great Britain were made on behalf of inventors residing abroad, it becomes clear that foreign patentees are well on the way to outnumbering Britishers. If figures for purely scientific inventions were available, they would probably be even more striking, and it is disquieting to realise that patentees with no real compulsion on them to manufacture in Great Britain are increasing rapidly; German applications, for example, increased from 4,050 in 1933 to 4,481 in 1935, while in the same time applications from the United States grew from 3,194 to 3,612, these two countries being responsible for well over sixty per cent of the total foreign applications. There were no requests made in 1935 for the grant of a compulsory licence, but there were 789 for indorsement of patents “Licences of Right”. The report is silent as to the results of the experimental extension of the search recently introduced, but the proportion of patents granted to applications made is apparently unaffected by it. The office surplus of receipts for 1935 over expenditure was £232,307, and must surely be a record.
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British Patents. Nature 137, 810 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137810a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137810a0