He regretted that so few results had been obtained from the Patent Bill of last year, but he would briefly refer to some of the changes thought desirable by inventors and by the council of the institute.

No one could deem it desirable, it could scarcely be thought reasonable, that an Englishman who was called upon to pay in the United States L7 for a valid patent for seventeen years should be still obliged in his own country to pay L175 for a less term of a patent which does not convey anything but a right to go to law.  It was also not reasonable to pretend by a deed to convey a proprietary right while reserving the power to grant compulsory licenses, which must tend to destroy the value of such proprietary right.

It was a reproach to legislative perspicacity that the grantee of a patent should be obliged to accept the view of the state, the grantor, as to the value of the invention to the nation, and also that any other method of proceeding to upset a patent, once granted, should be allowed than a suit for revocation to the crown, on the ground of error, such revocation if obtained not to prejudice the granting anew, with the old date, of a valid patent for the parts of the invention which are not proved to be anticipated at the trial.  There are many other points which could not be referred to on the present occasion, but he might say that the duty of the council would be to press them forward until the capitalist could consider patented property at least as sound an investment as any other.  So might the wealth of the nation be largely increased, and the sense of justice between man and man be more fully inculcated.  In the United States inventors were able at once to secure the favorable attention of capitalists, because there the whole business of the Patent Office was to assist the inventor to obtain a valid—­and, as far as possible, an indisputable—­patent.

Even so small an article as a pair of pliers, one of the most familiar of tools, had been proved to be capable of patented improvement.  Formerly these were always made to open and close at an angle which precluded their holding any object grasped by them with the desirable rigidity.  A clever workman invented a means of producing this effect by the application of a parallel motion.  He probably went to the office at Washington, was referred to a certain room in a certain corridor, and there found a gentleman whose business it was to know all about the patents for such tools.  By his aid he eliminated from his patent all anticipatory matter, and issued from the office with a valid patent, which, developed by capital, had supplied all the trades which employ such instruments with a better means of accomplishing their work, had employed capital and labor with remunerative results in producing the pliers, and had added one more to the little things which create trade for his country.