Development of Patent and Trade-Mark Systems and Their 16 26 32 Registration of Prints and Labels Examining Applications for and Granting of Patents Determining Priority of Inventions and Trade-Marks Recording Assignments, Grants, etc. . Supplying Patent and Trade-Mark Information Establishing Rules and Regulations. Relations with Other Government Agencies Relations with Foreign Governments Charges Made for Services III. ORGANIZATION Office Proper of the Commissioner of Patents Offices of the First Assistant Commissioner and the Assistant 40 43 44 48 48 49 50 52 56 59 59 60 62 65 THE PATENT OFFICE ITS HISTORY, ACTIVITIES, AND ORGANIZATION CHAPTER I HISTORY The administration of the laws governing patents, trademarks, prints, and labels is entrusted to the Commissioner of Patents, who is chief executive of the Patent Office, a bureau in the Department of the Interior. Patent laws are enacted under Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, which provides that Congress "shall have power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited terms to authors' and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." " 2 The granting of temporary monopolies of inventions to inventors as a method of recompense for their services to society and as a means of stimulating inventive effort, is of comparatively modern origin. It has become the practice of every civilized country in the world. While no scientific study has ever been made of the influence which patent protection has had in stimulating inventive effort, our present industrial era began about the time such protection was first effectively accorded, namely, about one hundred and fifty years ago. Within that period much greater progress has been made in industrial activity than during the entire preceding period of human history. The first and most fundamental of modern inventions were those of James Watt, who received his earliest patents from the British 1 The Librarian of Congress administers the copyright laws enacted under this section except those relating to labels and prints used for articles of manufacture. This section was inserted in the Constitution at the instance of James Madison and Charles Pinckney. I Government in 1769. Watt discovered and applied in his inventions the principles of the modern steam engine which revolutionized industry, resulting in the introduction of the modern factory system, railway transportation, and steamship navigation. The early invention of textile machinery by Arkwright, Hargreaves, and others, made possible the application of steam power to the processes of spinning and weaving, in which industries the factory system had its beginning. The introduction of the puddling furnace and hot-blast made possible large-scale production of iron, and the invention of the Bessemer process made steel available for structural purposes. The United States, soon after the enactment of the patent law of 1836, began contributing its part in industrial development by the invention of the electric telegraph, the vulcanization of rubber, the reaper, and the sewing machine. The age of electricity may be said to have had its beginning with the invention of the telephone in 1876, the dynamo about the same time, and the incandescent lamp a few years afterward, followed later on by the modern motor, high-power electrical transmission, and wireless communication. Electrical progress included applications of electricity to heating and chemistry, which involved the creation of some of the most important of our present industries. Beginning with the invention of the process of vulcanization of rubber, chemistry has become a channel of inventive endeavor which has reached out into a great multitude of new arts. The invention of the gas engine in the seventies and its utilization for gasoline, constituted the greatest advance in power generation since the invention of the steam engine and made possible the automobile and the aeroplane. The most significant recent development in the industrial field in this country, resulting from inventive effort, has been the production of automatic machinery. Beginning with its application to textile machinery, it has released man from drudgery in every branch of activity-in the home, in the office, in the factory, and in the field. Inventions have made available new forces of nature the utilization of which could never have been accomplished by manual labor. In this country, where the protection accorded inventors through the patent system is equal, if not superior to that of any other nation, inventive effort and the utilization of inventions, with the resulting totality of production and general material well-being have been greater in the past fifty years than in any other country in the world. While it is not possible to show to what extent governmental stimulation by granting temporary patent monopolies, has affected inventive effort, the fact is significant that the period of the world's greatest strides in industrial progress is coincident with that of such encouragement. In the authoritative treatise, "Robinson on Patents," the author remarks, To stimulate inventive skill and energy is one of the most effective methods of advancing national prosperity, and in modern times especially attracts the attention of all enlightened governments. While it is certain that the human mind, independently of external impulses, is constantly engaged in pushing its investigations into new fields and in achieving new results, it by no means follows that practical inventions in the industrial arts would rapidly be multiplied without the inducement offered by the prospect of pecuniary reward. Such inventions necessitate not only the conception of a new idea by the mind, but the reduction of that idea to practice in some tangible and useful form. . . . To lead an able and prudent man to engage in such enterprises as these, some reasonable hope of profiting by his own labors must be aroused within him, and this can be effected only by a promise on the part of the public that if he succeeds in his invention he shall be suitably rewarded. Experience teaches that this is true; the progress of inventive triumphs, in all civilized nations, being directly in proportion to the encouragement offered inventors of the state. Act of 1790. Soon after the First Congress assembled a bill was reported to comply with this provision of the Constitution. In his first annual address to Congress, on January 8, 1790, President Washington urged the enactment of a patent law, saying: "I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement, as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad as to the exertion of skill and genius at home." The bill which had been introduced in the previous year' was enacted in amended form on April 10, 1790 (1 Stat. L., 109). The act constituted a board of three members consisting of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Attorney General, and authorized them, or any two of them, to grant patents for any |