Mr. FARNSWORTH. There are just as many as there are workers, but essentially they are all the same thing. The CHAIRMAN. These different receivers, however, are all based upon the same patent, are they? Mr. FARNSWORTH. The same system of patents, our own patents, the RCA patents, the Bell Telephone patents. The CHAIRMAN. And then these different receivers are possible because of the licensing system which enables different companies to develop their own particular type. Mr. FARNSWORTH. Yes; their own particular application. The CHAIRMAN. These types are not essentially different? Mr. FARNSWORTH. In any fundamental way they are not different. The CHAIRMAN. The Philco television receiver would not be any less effective than your television receiver. Mr. FARNSWORTH. It would not be any less effective unless possibly they didn't do a good job designing it. There is no fundamental reason why it shouldn't be just as good. The CHAIRMAN. In building. Mr. FARNSWORTH. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. But is there any patentee which controls the patent by which these television receivers are constructed? Mr. FARNSWORTH. It is not possible to build a television receiver without working under our patent; it is not possible to build a television receiver, in my opinion, without working under RCA license. The CHAIRMAN. What is the difference between your license and the RCA license? Mr. FARNSWORTH. It covers a different-well, you see this art has grown up so interwoven that part of the patents belong to RCA, part belong to us, part belong to Bell Telephone. The CHAIRMAN. But the fundamental patent is yours. Mr. FARNSWORTH. Several of the fundamental patents are ours and I think several of the fundamental patents are RCA's also. The CHAIRMAN. Then to get the perfect result, all of these fundamental patents must be worked together. Mr. FARNSWORTH. They must; yes; they must be regarded as a unit. The CHAIRMAN. What are the restrictions that are contained in these various licenses? Mr. FARNSWORTH. As far as we are concerned we are not attempting to control an industry, we don't think that is our function, but one limitation is that there are no exclusive licenses, we won't grant any exclusive license. There is no attempt to fix price. Rates are made small because we believe in that, and there is no restriction in an attempt to control the industry. The CHAIRMAN. What restriction on your licensees? Mr. FARNSWORTH. They are restricted because they have to pay us a royalty. The CHAIRMAN. Do we understand, then, that practically the sole purpose of your licenses is to secure a royalty for your company? Mr. FARNSWORTH. Yes; that is the sole reason. The CHAIRMAN. And you do not use the license in any way to restrict the development of the industry? Mr. FARNSWORTH. No. The CHAIRMAN. Does anybody who holds a license in this field in your opinion use the license for that purpose? Mr. FARNSWORTH. In my opinion, no; because if they did they would be very foolish to constitute themselves a policing agency. The CHAIRMAN. Do you wish the committee to understand that the development of television is as free as it can be within the limitation of the general purpose not to bring it into public use before the standard has been sufficiently developed to prevent freezing the art? Mr. FARNSWORTH. Yes. It is my contention that the only thing holding back television is its own problems of getting it under way. The CHAIRMAN. Do you know of any person in the television field who might not agree with the conclusions which you have expressed here in answer to my questions? Mr. FARNSWORTH. I don't know of anyone. I should certainly like to know of anyone and I would attempt to convince them otherwise. The CHAIRMAN. That is, you haven't heard of any complaint from any person who knows of any attempt to suppress or restrict the development of this art? Mr. FARNSWORTH. No. At least nothing coherent. I have heard mumblings, perhaps, but no coherent complaint has come from anyone that I know. The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions to be asked? Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. Farnsworth, before you leave the stand, you testified this morning that since 1926 you have put 12 years of labor into your corporation, and approximately a million dollars has been spent, and you hope for your profits in the future. Has not your incentive to go forward been based on your patent protection? Mr. FARNSWORTH. Yes. It has been based on the value of the inventions both as represented in technic and in patents, but obviously the technic is necessarily more or less a secret part of the asset, whereas the patent is the only really legal evidence aside from the result that we have, and our patents measure the extent of our success. The CHAIRMAN. It wasn't the desire to get a patent that first started you out as a boy of 12? Mr. FARNSWORTH. No; but I regarded a patent as a necessary adjunct to it, even at 12. The CHAIRMAN. Don't you think it is likely that you would have proceeded with this great desire you had regardless of the patent system as such? Mr. FARNSWORTH. I don't doubt it, but even then the patent situation influenced or colored the type of disclosures I made. I attempted to keep the whole world from knowing that I was an inventor just as long as I could, and I would counsel any young inventor to do the opposite. He had better run a chance of having his work stolen than not to get more help on it and be more open on it. I think that the impression in the whole United States of the necessity of secrecy in inventions in the fact that somebody is likely to steal this and steal that works backwards. The CHAIRMAN. The patent system which affords protection to the inventor so far as it does afford that protection is the instru 124491-39-pt. 3—12 mentality, as it were, or the means by which discoveries may be broadcast and made eventually useful to the whole public. Mr. FARNSWORTH. Yes, it is; it constitutes the basic guiding system. The CHAIRMAN. So you think the patent system should be improved so far as it can be improved to give greater protection to the inventor for the period in which protection should be granted. Mr. FARNSWORTH. A streamline situation just as much as possible, improve it as much as you can without changing it basically. The CHAIRMAN. And improve the strength of the patent so that its validity may be more certain than now. Mr. FARNSWORTH. Yes; and then make it easier for independent inventors of small means to complete with companies who have arrived because there is where the valuable material originates. It won't arrive in our laboratory from now on; it will be a perfection of art, which is very important, but fundamental ideas which require the patent situation most basically and most urgently are those which originate in the small laboratories. The CHAIRMAN. Out of your experience have you any suggestions to make to this committee as to the manner in which the individual inventor can be protected as you have just described against the large corporation? Mr. FARNSWORTH. Well, only in such small particulars as could at least be better handled by the patent attorneys, such as printing of certain documents and simplification of interference procedure, and so forth. The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions? Representative REECE. If you know, I think it would be interesting, not that it has any particular bearing on the question, for you to state how you became interested in this question. We hear a great deal said about the inventor being born, not made. I think it would be interesting to know how you happened to get started to thinking along this line, since this is a more or less new field. Mr. FARNSWORTH. Why, it is difficult for me now to make an accurate guess as to what originally got me started. I invented perpetual motion at the age of 6-I don't know whether that means anything. I studied everything I could get hold of in the way of aviation magazines, and I was reading relativity at the age of 13, and while I learned the words I believe at that time I knew just as much about the subject as the author who wrote the book because he only knew the words. [Laughter.] It is an intriguing art. I believe I had decided before I was 12 that I could be an inventor. It was my grand secret and therefore I just worked on it, night work, pleasure, which probably led to certainly the invention of the dissector tube, which came right out of the air in a second as soon as I knew enough to understand that an electron was an entity; in other words, with the actual discovery in my life of an electron, perhaps more accurately the photoelectric effect, I had the basis on which to go ahead. The CHAIRMAN. If there are no other questions the committee will stand in recess until 2 o'clock. (Whereupon, at 12:10 p. m., a recess was taken until 2 p. m. of the same day.) AFTERNOON SESSION (The committee reconvened at 2:25 p. m. at the expiration of the recess.) The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Dienner. Mr. DIENNER. Senator, the witness we now produce is a man of wide and expert knowledge of the laws relating to patents on inventions in the various countries of the world. His testimony will give us a new and I believe very helpful light upon questions raised before this committee as to the operation of certain provisions of the laws in the chief industrial countries in Europe. Mr. Langner, will you please be sworn? The CHAIRMAN. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give in this proceeding will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Mr. LANGNER. I do. TESTIMONY OF LAWRENCE LANGNER, MEMBER OF LANGNER, PARRY, CARD & LANGNER, PATENT ATTORNEYS, NEW YORK CITY Mr. DIENNER. Will you please state your full name and your professional connections? Mr. LANGNER. My name is Lawrence Langner. I am the senior partner of Langner, Parry, Card & Langner, of New York City, and practice as an international patent solicitor. I passed the qualifying examination of the British Chartered Institute of Patent Agents in 1910. That is the body which deals with practitioners before the British Patent Office, and I came to this country in 1911, and I have practiced since that time in the taking out of foreign patents for American companies. I also have an office in London, in partnership with English partners who represent our firm in that country. The CHAIRMAN. Of what country are you a native? Mr. LANGNER. I am a native Britisher, naturalized United States citizen. I was adviser to the committee appointed by Mr. Woodrow Wilson to prepare the patent section of the Treaty of Versailles. COMPARISON OF PROVISIONS OF FOREIGN AND U. S. PATENT SYSTEMS Mr. DIENNER. Mr. Langner, will you please discuss the chief provisions of the patent systems of the most important industrial countries of Europe and compare the same with the provisions of the United States patent laws? Mr. LANGNER. I will be glad to do that, but I would like to begin by explaining the provisions of the international convention which connects all these systems together. We have coming from the different countries an exchange of inventions, you might call them a two-directional stream, that is a stream of inventions coming from Europe, coming from the different countries of Europe, and then our inventions going over to those countries. That stream of inventions is regulated by what is known as the international convention. Fortyfive countries of the world, including all of the leading industrial countries, are parties to that convention, and the theory behind that convention is this: That no country shall give to its own nationals benefits which it does not give to the nationals of other countries. In other words, an American is treated in England the same way an Englishman is treated in England, and over here, we being parties to it, the nationals of other countries are treated under our patent laws the same way the United States nationals are. When you get to these different countries, we have three types of patent systems. The CHAIRMAN. Is the convention any broader than that? Mr. LANGNER. There are certain specific provisions under this convention which, for example, allow a man who has filed an application in this country, 12 months priority to file in the other country, and he is protected during that 12 months' period from the consequence of publication which otherwise would invalidate his patent. In other words the other features are matters of detail and of procedure; and every now and again they will agree on some new provision because this convention has been going on since 1883. They meet about every 6 years, I believe it is, and make changes in it. But the thing is a continuous conventional treaty. The CHAIRMAN. How is the convention constituted? Mr. LANGNER. It is constituted by-it is a treaty document that has to be ratified by the Senate, and at these meetings of the international convention we send over delegates. The last one was in London in 1934 and they formulate new suggestions and proposals. It covers not only patents but also trade-marks, designs, petty patents, and trade names. The CHAIRMAN. What sanction is there for the suggestions or regulations that may be adopted by the convention? Mr. LANGNER. They bring them back, each set of delegates brings them back to their own country and they must be ratified by the governments of the respective countries before the changes go into effect. We have three types of patent systems. I divide them in that way, based on the thing that most fundamentally distinguishes them, the fact as to whether they are examination patent systems, or registration patent systems. The leading industrial countries of the world, except France, have what they call an examination system that originated in the U. S. Patent Office and was copied by other countries rather slowly; and in fact it was only in 1904 that it was copied in England. It does not exist in France even at this date, although a project is before the French Parliament to introduce the examination system. The second type of system is the registration system where you merely file a specification in the Patent Office, no examination is made, and the patent is granted without any examination at all. The third type of patent system is the Russian patent system. That is the only system of its kind in which rewards are given to inventors. I think in view of some of the remarks made this morning about patent attorneys, you may be interested to know that practically all the patent attorneys in Russia were shot after this new law came into existence, and that is not a joke; that is absolutely true. The CHAIRMAN. That was an effective way of dealing with that problem. |