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The new Act abolishes the Commissioners of Patents, who are replaced by the Board of Trade as the governing body of the Patent Office. The Comptroller is the chief officer of the Board, and upon him devolves the charge of managing the business and superintending the work of the office. The Board was authorised to make rules, having the same effect as if forming part of the Act, for regulating the conduct of Patent business; and it has accordingly promulgated a long series of rules for that purpose accompanied by forms.

The chief alterations in the procedure are :—1. Non-inventors may join with inventors in applying for a Patent. 2. The applications and specifications are referred to official examiners, who report whether the documents are in proper form; if they are not in proper form, the Comptroller requires them to be amended before acceptance, subject to appeal to a Law Officer. 3. Oppositions to the grant of Patents are decided by the Comptroller, subject to appeal to a Law Officer. 4. The steps necessary to be taken for obtaining a Patent are fewer. 5. Applications and other documents may be sent to the Patent Office through the post. 6. Patents are sealed by the Comptroller with the seal of the Patent Office. 7. The Government fees are reduced from 25l. for a three years' Patent to 47. for a four years' Patent, and the payment of the remaining fees of 50l. and 100l. is postponed to the end of the fourth and the seventh years respectively, or they are payable in small annual sums. 8. Applications for leave to amend specifications are decided in the first instance by the Comptroller and on appeal by a Law Officer. 9. A new mode of obtaining

the repeal of invalid Patents is substituted for the old proceeding of scire facias.

Whilst the procedure has undergone great alterations, the substantive law has been but little touched. The old decisions of the Courts regarding the subject matter of patentable inventions; the incidents of utility and novelty which every patentable invention must possess; the contents of specifications and the infringement of Patents, still remain applicable to Patents issued under the new Act. The duration of a Patent is the same as before the Act, and its extent is practically the same, being only smaller by the omission of the Channel Islands. The principal changes to be noticed are:-1. The Board of Trade is empowered to order patentees to grant licenses if they make default in granting them on reasonable terms. 2. The right of the Crown to use patented inventions without making compensation has been abolished. 3. A Patent may be assigned for any place in or part of the United Kingdom. 4. A British Patent will no longer come to an end at the expiration of any earlier foreign Patent for the same invention.

In preparing the Fifth Edition of this work for the press, the provisions relating to Patents in the new Act have been incorporated with the text, and the recent decisions of the Courts have been noticed in their proper places. Considerable additions have been introduced, and the matter of several chapters has undergone rearrangement with the view of establishing a closer logical connection between the various parts. The whole has been subjected to careful revision, and no pains have been spared to render the treatise one that

patentees and inventors may consult with confidence as a trustworthy exposition of that branch of law with which their interests are most closely concerned. It may be added, that although the treatise was originally written especially for their use, the authors venture to think that in its enlarged form it may deserve the notice of the legal profession, since the large experience of one of them in obtaining Patents, and in the conduct of litigation arising out of Patents for upwards of thirty years has been turned to account in the production of the volume.

Besides summaries of the Patent Laws of Foreign States, all of which have been revised by professional correspondents, there will be found in the Appendix some account of those of our own Colonies, and reprints of the only two Acts of Parliament which have now any direct bearing on the subject of this work; as well as of the rules and forms issued by the Board of Trade under the authority of the new Act, of the rules framed by the Law Officers in regard to proceedings before them, and of the rules of the Privy Council with respect to applications for the extensions of Patents.

The Appendix also contains a reprint of the International Convention and Protocol relating to arrangements for the mutual protection of industrial property including patents. To this convention Great Britain has recently given her adhesion, and a chapter has therefore been devoted to the subject in the body of the treatise.

The copious Index will be found of material assistance by those readers who are in search of any particular topic.

47 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS:

October 1884.

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