English Patent Law Having dealt in Part I. with patents from the point of view of their history and evolution, their economy and policy, their nature and jurisprudential relations, and to a slight extent from the point of view of their commercial value, it is now proposed to sketch in outline English patent law as it obtains at the present day. This object is rendered the more easy by the pre-existence of many hundreds of decided cases in which the principles of the law have been laid down in detail and with precision. A greater portion of the law by far is to be found in judicial exposition and decision than in the few statutes which are mainly concerned with procedure for obtaining and upholding patents. On a collation of pronouncements, both judicial and statutory, it is seen that principles are comparatively few. In the past, patent law has suffered from the empiricism of its exponents, with the result that broad principle and accurate generalisation have given place to masses of detail; but the maturity to which case-law has now attained renders a scientific treatment possible, if not compulsory. Although principles may be clear and easy of comprehension, it by no means follows that they are easy of application. Indeed, the reverse is true. It is in their application to the circumstances of a particular case that the divergencies in opinion, which are so much associated with patents, will usually be found. Difficulties, too, have arisen through failure to observe the demarcation between technicalities of law and those of the arts and sciences to which patent specifications relate. There is technology in law and technology in manufacturing industry. A confusion of one with the other is unnecessary. According to a prevalent idea, legal principles and subjects of invention are so closely interwoven as to require simultaneous treatment. This idea is both fallacious and harmful, since it tends to an obscuration of both and to the frustration of a possible desire to master legal intricacies without a prolonged study of industrial technicality. In this exposition of patent law, principles are treated in the abstract, except when an example of the practical application of a principle will shed light on the principle itself. An exposition of the law upon the lines foreshadowed above naturally lends itself to a tripartite division, viz. the conditions which must be antecedently present to obtain a valid patent; the construction or interpretation of the specifications of the invention; and the patent grant and its enjoyment. Of these, the construction or interpretation of specifications will be found to contain the means by which, when we arrive at the stage where principles are to be applied, many difficulties can be overcome. When the rule or principle applicable to the case in hand has been found, the application to the given set of circumstances becomes necessary. Since one set of facts differs from another set for the circumstances in no two cases are exactly similar to lay down rules for the application of principles would involve a disquisition disproportionate to the object of this Primer. To learn how trained minds have applied the principles in particular instances, single cases may be mastered, and compared. This process, unlike the knowledge of principles alluded to above, involves acquaintance with the industry to which the invention relates, a scrutiny of the nature of the evidence which has been adduced, and an application of the results to the wording of the specification which has come into question. This will not be entered into here; briefly to pass in review the guiding principles of the subject must suffice. CHAPTER I Conditions Antecedent to a Valid Grant The conditions of validity appear from the terms of the patent itself. Some of the conditions are demanded by case-law and some by statute. The conditions are usually referable to the inventor and patentee, and the invention and its specification. Also before a patent can be obtained, the application may have to meet certain opposition proceedings. Each of these topics will be now dealt with. I. THE INVENTOR AND PATENTEE The Statute of Monopolies, as we saw in Part I. Ch. I., restricted the Crown to the granting of monopolies "to the true and first inventor" only "of any manner of new manufacture within this realm." Consequently, unless the recipient of a patent was the true and first inventor, then according to the Statute, no valid patent had been granted. It was not until the year 1885 that Parliament declared that it was, and had always been, legal to grant a patent to several persons, of whom one only might be the inventor. The term "inventor "includes several classes of persons. At the present time the normal inventor may, in general, be considered as the person who, in this country, first communicates his idea to the public through the medium of the Patent Office, although the Patent Office may not immediately transmit the information to the public. It has been shown in Part I. how patents were granted for the encouragement of industries in this country, irrespective of the introducers of the industries being the actual devisers or originators of the inventions. Consequently, at the present day, first introducers of inventions, however they may have |