destined for making them, the value in money of all counterfeit articles already sold, and damages for infringement. The penalties for infringing through ignorance are an injunction from continuing the infringement and assessed damages.

The articles aforesaid can be seized, even when pledged to another.

The court can in all cases, if it see fit, and generally does, give the aggrieved party the right of publishing, by public advertisement, at the cost of the infringer, the full or abridged account of the trial and sentence.

Any one or more of the joint owners or licensees of a patent can become a party to an action for infringement before a civil tribunal.

Patent cases in Belgium are much cheaper and more quickly decided than in England.

If the plaintiff be resident abroad he must deposit with the court security for costs in money.

Annulling a Patent.-Patents can be annulled by the tribunals partially or entirely--if the description be intentionally obscure, or so incomplete or not sufficiently explicit for an ordinary person in the trade to which it relates to be able to work it without experiment or invention; if an important part have been withheld; if it be not an invention of man; if it be not commercial or industrial; if it be contrary to public law or morals; if it be not new; or if it have been commercially worked in the kingdom prior to the date of the patent by parties unconnected with the inventor. The annulment of the foreign patent on which it was based before the end of the term for which it was originally granted, does not nullify the Belgian patent of importation.

A patent is good until pronounced by the administration to be cancelled; such pronunciation is final, and cannot be appealed against.

Official Publication.-A description, embracing the essential points of every patented invention, is published by the authorities in the official Recueil Spécial des Inventions-nominally three months after the grant of the patent. This publication is, however, usually a year or more in arrear. Until these three months have expired, the invention is kept secret by Government, after which any one can, on paying the cost of copying, obtain from the authorities a description embracing the entire substance of the invention.

About 7,000 patents of all kinds are now secured yearly, and the total number, December, 1904, has reached 180,000.

Ornamental designs can be protected by their authors in perpetuity by registration.

Cost. The usual cost of Belgian Patents of Invention or Importation varies from £8 10s. to £10. Taxes on same, including agent's fees, £1 10s. before end of first year, £2 second year, and so on, increasing 10s. each year. Patents of Addition from £8 to £9 10s. Proving working, £9. Registering a trade mark, £4 15s. Designs, £5 5s.

BERMUDA.

(Population, 16,000.)

The law is almost identical with the English except that there is no provisional protection or annual taxes. Cost of Patent, £21.

Cost of Trade mark Registration, £15.

BOLIVIA.

(Population, 2,000,000.)

Patents of Invention are granted for periods of from ten to fifteen years. Patents of Importation for

machinery new in the realm are granted as follows; if the outlay of the applicant in the establishment be $25,000, a three-year patent is granted; if $50,000 outlay, a six-year patent; if $100,000 or upward, a ten-year patent is issued. These patents are for a limited extent of territory only. Improvements on patented inventions can be protected by adding a further description to the papers filed describing the original invention. A patent is made void if the owner works secret improvements without filing his descriptions, or if working be not commenced within a year of the grant. Medicines cannot be protected.

Compulsory registration has been decreed for all trade marks used in Bolivia to mark foreign goods under penalty of a fine. Term, ten years renewable.

They are subject to an annual tax (under pain of forfeiture) of £4, including agency, or a trader can have his mark registered completely for ten years

at start.

Usual Costs: Patent, £80. Trade marks, £16 10s. for one year; then 10 renewing fee for one year, and £4 a year after for nine years and so on, or £38 for ten years complete.

BRAZIL.

(Population, 15,000,000.)

Kinds and Durations of Patents.-Patents of Invention are granted for fifteen years.

Patents for improvements on existing patents, free of annual taxes, are granted to expire with existing patent.

An invention patented abroad can be protected in Brazil by the inventor within twelve months of the date of application for the original foreign patent, notwithstanding any publication during the interim ;

and such patent takes priority over an application by another inventor for the same invention during said interim, but expires with the original foreign patent.

Provisional protection is granted, if desired, before patenting, but this is of little or no value except to residents.

What can be Patented. Any new industrial product, or new process, or new application of old process for obtaining an industrial product or result, or improvement on an existing patented invention, can be patented.

By new is meant not in commercial use and unpublished in any country before application for a patent.

Procedure.--There is an examination before grant of the patent, stricter in the case of chemical, alimentary, or pharmaceutical inventions than with others, but only with a view of ascertaining if the documents be in order, whether the invention be dangerous to public health, security, law, or morality, and whether it be patentable. The question of novelty is little gone into.

In applying for a patent of addition the original patent on which it is based must be forwarded to Brazil.

Two or more inventions cannot be protected under one patent.

Rights Conferred.—It is an infringement of the patent to make, sell, conceal, receive for the purposes of sale or import, the patented article, or use the patented process, and the penalty for such infringement is a fine of from £100 to £1000, and 10 to 50 per cent. of the real and constructive damages (and the forfeiture to the patentee, in aggravated cases, of the counterfeit articles and plant for their manufacture).

When the infringer has been associated as an agent or employé with the patentee, it is considered an aggravation of the offence.

Co-patentees have equal and independent rights to use the invention.

The Government can at any time purchase the patent at a valuation.

Working. The invention must be worked in a bona fide manner in the empire within three years of the date of the patent, and to such an extent as to supply the wants of the country at reasonable rates, and such working must not be suspended except in case of force majeure (a state of siege, for instance, preventing the working), on pain of forfeiture of the patent rights over that portion of the territory that, in the opinion of the authorities, was not properly supplied.

Improper use of word "Patent."-There is a fine of from £20 to £100 for the use of the word" Patent," or its equivalent, for any unpatented article, or article for which the patent has expired.

Taxes.-All Patents of Invention become void unless the annual tax be paid fully. This, with agency charges, comes to £5 at end of first year; £6 4s. at end of second year, and so on, increasing £1 4s. each year.

Cost. Average cost of patent of invention

Average cost of patent of addition

...

£32 £28 £9

Certificate of working

...

£18

Cost of registering a trade mark

£12 10s.

Assignment of patent

BRITISH GUIANA..

(Population, 300,000.)

The British law with slight modifications has been

re-enacted for British Guiana.

The differences being