devise a boat propelled by steam, and was acquainted with John Fitch's efforts to build his first steamboat, and lent sympathetic encouragement to both projects.

In conformity with his deep interest in applied science and legal means to promote industrial progress, he strongly presented while President, in a special message to Congress, the need of a separate Patent Office as an independent bureau, it being then a minor appendage of the State Department. He also urged other constructive legislation to strengthen and justify the system. Always, was he keen to initiate improvements and surround the system with proper safeguards.

This government is the result of compromise. The democratic idealisms of Jefferson blended with the strong, centralizing realisms of Hamilton to form a composite state which has become more democratic in basis and spirit than Jefferson ever dreamed of, and stronger in its centralization and more direct in its control than Hamilton ever had reason to hope for. Madison in a great measure embodied this compromising spirit, both in his close personal relations with these famous antagonists and in his absorption of such of their ideas as could be reconciled. With Hamilton, he was the controlling agency in giving unity to our government and endowing it with practical means to express its sovereignty, to exploit its common resources and to encourage and energize its national industries; while with Jefferson, he was the passionate exponent of democracy, advocating the enlargement of the people's powers and urging them to greater participation in the affairs of state.

The greatest of the constructive statesmen of that era, so rich in political ability, was the brilliant Hamilton. He was Madison's chief associate in the production of the Constitution, and with Madison, through the medium mainly of the "Federalist", was the almost indispensable agent in the adoption of our organic law. His natural tendency to strengthen the hands of the Federal government urged him to advocate laws encouraging invention as a national means to promote industry. In his famous "Report on Manufactures", while he was Secretary of the Treasury in Washington's first administration, he remarked "If the nation has genius for mechanical improvement, as is so often stated, encourage it". And again he asserted "The encouragement of new inven

tions and discoveries at home is among the most useful and exceptional acts which could govern a country". No other statesman of his time had a clearer vision or a more comprehensive view of fiscal and economic affairs or a greater aptness for practical government.

It follows that Washington, with his clear outlook and breadth of view, and with his readiness to listen to the counsels of Hamilton, would take similar action. After an abortive attempt to give life by legislative enactment to the constitutional provision in the first session of the first Congress, Washington, at the convening of the second session, was constrained to advise Congress that

"The advancement of agriculture, commerce and manufacture, by all proper means, will not I trust, need recommendation; but I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediencey of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad as to the skill and genius in producing them at home * Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature."

*

This led to the enactment of the law of 1790, which created the United States patent system..

Although there was not wanting evidence that the basis of an industrial society was existent in exhibitions here and there of mechanical skill and inventive ingenuity, the prevailing industries at that time were the gathering of the products of the soil and the sea. It took prescience of a high order to foresee, even in a small measure, the mighty contributions of, and the changed order due to invention, and it is a noteworthy fact that the most weighty influences favorable to the introduction of legal protection of property in ideas were those statesmen who were most instrumental in launching the Constitution and most prolific, in devising constructive measures to carry on the Government.

SOME FACTS FROM OUR OFFICE POSTER.

The subscription list now includes the names of most of the Patent Office Corps, of many attorneys and others interested in patent matters located in Washington and in the larger cities of the United States and Canada; and of a goodly number of foreign subscribers-in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Paris. and also in Buenos Aires and Tokyo.

PROPOSALS FOR SIMPLIFYING PATENT

APPEALS.

By M. H. Coulston, Chief Clerk, U. S. Patent Office. September 6, 1918.

The scheme of appeals under which an application for patent may now be prosecuted to an ultimate allowance or refusal, is briefly, as follows:

All appeals are taken in the first instance from rulings by primary examiners, law examiners, the examiner of trade-marks and designs and the examiner of interferences. These appeals always involve questions of form or questions of merit. Questions of form embrace all questions of office policy. Questions of merit embrace all questions involving the validity of patent grants.

Appeals from rulings on questions of form are provided by the Patent Office Rules of Practice and lie directly to the Commissioner. They are commonly called petitions to distinguish them from appeals proper. The propriety and necessity of vesting jurisdiction in the Commissioner to finally determine appeals or petitions involving questions of form has never been questioned.

Appeals from final rulings involving questions of merit lie in the first instance to the Board of Examiners-inChief. From their decision, in patent cases, and appeal lies to the Commissioner in person. From his decision an appeal lies to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. This strictly speaking ends the line of appeals but an aggrieved party, who is an applicant for the grant of a patent, may, in effect, appeal still further. Section 4915 of the Revised Statutes provides that a party so situated may file a bill in equity and from the decision of the lower Federal Court having initial jurisdiction of that suit an appeal lies to an appropriate Federal Court of Appeals.

All appeals involving questions of merit are provided for by the statute except appeals lying from the adverse interlocutory decisions of the law examiner having jurisdiction of motions for dissolution or amendment of patent interferences. These last mentioned appeals are

provided by the Patent Office Rules and lie, first to the Examiners-in-Chief and from them to the Commissioner in person, the Commissioner's decision being final in inter partes proceedings as to this class of cases.

From the foregoing it will be seen that every applicant for patent whose application has been finally refused by a primary examiner upon a ground involving a question of merits has at least five chances to get a reversal of that ruling by appealing to as many different higher tribunals. The same line of appeals is also open to a party to a patent interference who has received an adverse decision in an interference contest instituted to establish priority of invention as between himself and another.

Also, if registration is refused, a line of appeal lies open to an applicant for the registration of a trade-mark, print or label from the Examiner of Trade-Marks and Designs to the Commissioner in person. From an adverse decision by the latter on an application for registration of a trade-mark an appeal lies to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.

Also a line of appeal lies open to a party seeking or holding a trade-mark registration and who has received an adverse decision in an interference, opposition or cancellation proceeding. from the decision of the Examiner of Interferences to the Commissioner in person and from his decision to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.

The accompanying chart is a graphic representation of the various lines of appeal mentiond.

It is quite possible for an applicant to run an entire line of appeals ex parte, and then be thrown into one or more interferences and run the same course of appeals over again one or more times. It is not often, to be sure, that an applicant has this experience but cases do arise that seem well nigh interminable. Multitudinous appeals are often the result of the inability of the Office to raise all appealable questions at one time, and sometimes the result of the tactical strategy of counsel.

As an illustration of the course of appeals which may be run I desire to refer to the history of an application quite recently on my desk. This application was origin