such "useful art, manufacture, machine, or device, or new improvement thereon, not before known and used, if they shall deem the same sufficiently useful and important." The act was held to give the board authority to refuse patents for want of novelty of invention or insufficiency of utility or importance, and this power was vigorously exercised.

Thomas Jefferson, who was Secretary of State at the time of this enactment, was by virtue of his office made the keeper of the records of patents, and became the most active member of the board, examining personally every application filed during his term. He was thus, in fact, the first administrator of the patent system in this country.

Among other provisions the law of 1790 required the applicant for a patent to file his application with the Secretary of State. No claim or oath was called for. No discrimination was made between a citizen and an alien. A written specification containing a description and a drawing of the invention, and in certain cases a model also, was to be furnished.

The act required an examination to be made of the patent, and it made the patent grant prima facie evidence that the invention was truly described and that the patentee was the first inventor. The total fees and other charges provided for in the act were about four dollars for each patent issued. The law limited the life of a patent to fourteen years, and there was no provision for an extension. The patent board was absolute in its authority to grant patents, and there was no appeal from its decision.

The first application for a patent was made to the board, three months after the approval of the act, by Samuel Hopkins, who, on July 31, 1790, was granted a patent for "a new method of making pot and pearl ashes." During the life of the act of 1790, a period of about three years, fifty-seven patents were granted by the board.

Act of 1793. The severity with which the board scrutinized the specifications, and the strictness with which it exercised its power, resulting in the rejection of many applications, caused much dissatisfaction. Inventors complained that the members of the board were not in sympathy with those whom the law was intended to benefit, and that they were by education and interest hostile to the

industrial classes. This clamor against the enforcement of the existing law finally found a response in the enactment of a law on February 21, 1793 (1 Stat. L., 318), which repealed the act of 1790, and inaugurated a registration system similar to that in force in Great Britain at that time. The new law abolished the board of cabinet officers and conferred the duty of granting patents upon the Secretary of State.

The registration system under this act permitted any inventor to obtain a patent regardless of the fact that he might not have been the original inventor or that his contrivance might not have been useful or novel. The power of revision and rejection previously exercised by the authorities was destroyed. Compliance with certain formalities was all that was necessary to obtain a patent grant. The procedure, which was designed to make the issue of a patent as easy as possible has been described as follows in an official report:"

The applicant paid into the Treasury a fee of $30, receipt for which he presented to the Secretary of State, to whose department the money finally passed, in the clerk-hire account. After this preliminary step the inventor presented his petition in the form of a sworn statement to the Secretary of State. Practically the Secretary took him at his word, and issued the patent to him, having first secured the President's signature to the letters patent and the Attorney General's approval of the form. Returned to the Secretary for his final approval, the letters were recorded, sealed and issued. These records were kept in the Secretary's Office, as were also the models. The latter were furnished when the Secretary thought them necessary to supplement the application. The Secretary's Office was to prepare for issue on request copies of the specifications of devices patented. These copies were furnished to anyone desiring them, for a fee amounting to twenty cents a sheet. If drawings were called for a charge of two dollars was made."

The patent grant was issued for a term of fourteen years as in the preceding act. There was, however, a provision that interfering applications were to be determined by a board of arbitration, one to be chosen by each applicant and one by the Secretary

* President's Commission on Economy and Efficiency, Report of the investigation of the United States patent office, December, 1912, pp. 218-19.

of State. The decisions of this board were final. Instead of a patent grant being prima facie evidence of validity as under the 1790 act, the attributes of a patent could only be ascertained by litigation. Aliens were originally barred from obtaining patents under this law, but an amendment passed April 17, 1800 (2 Stat. L., 37), gave aliens who had resided in this country for two years the same rights as citizens, provided they submitted an affidavit declaring their intention to become citizens. On February 15, 1819 (3 Stat. L., 481), power was conferred upon the United States Circuit Courts to prevent violation of the rights of authors and inventors, by granting injunctions according to the principles and procedure of courts of equity. The act of 1793 remained in force until 1836.

Patent Administration, 1790 to 1836. While under the act of 1790 the power of granting patents was vested in three cabinet officers, the patent system was organized in the State Department where the subsequent act of 1793 definitely placed it.

Until 1802 the entire routine work in connection with patent grants was performed by one clerk in the State Department. In the latter part of that year a "Superintendent of Patents" was appointed, who in 1810 was given an assistant. The patent fees at that time were paid directly into the Treasury by the applicant, and no account was kept in the State Department of such pay>

ments.

On April 28, 1810 (2 Stat. L., 589), Congress authorized “the purchase of a building for the accommodation of the general post office and of the office of the keeper of patents." The quarters purchased were occupied the next year.

On April 11, 1816, President Madison in a special message to Congress urged the creation of a patent office as a distinct bureau in charge of a director in the State Department but no such action was then taken.

The act of 1793 gave trouble from the start. Questions of originality, duplication, frivolousness of patent applications, etc., arose in increasing numbers. Patents were granted in duplicate and triplicate for the same invention, and spurious claims were sold throughout the country. The courts became overwhelmed with patent litigation.

General dissatisfaction was expressed, and Congress and the Department of State made several investigations of the Patent Office and of the patent system during this period. Among these was an inquiry into the conduct of the Patent Office made in 1830 by order of President Jackson,* a report of which was submitted to Congress on January 26, 1830. The next year Congress called upon the Secretary of State for a report on conditions in the Patent Office. Another inquiry was made by order of the Secretary of State in 1833, the result of which was published in 1834.

These reports disclosed the inadequacy of quarters and of clerical help and a laxity in the recording of patent grants. As a result, one more person was added to the force of the Patent Office, which then consisted of three persons. A resolution of March 3, 1832 (4 Stat. L., 605), made provision for the recording of patents.

During the period (1790 to July 27, 1836), in which the acts of 1790 and 1793 were in effect, 9957 patents were issued.

Act of 1836. In view of the failure of the law of 1793 to accomplish the purpose for which it was designed, Senator John Ruggles of Maine on December 31, 1835, introduced a resolution for the appointment of a select committee of three Senators to investigate the condition of the Patent Office and the laws relating to the issuing of patents. The resolution was approved the next day, and the committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Senator Ruggles. The report which was submitted April 28, 1836, called attention to the unsatisfactory conditions under the act of 1793, and presented a bill for a new patent law and a reorganization of the Patent Office. In discussing the practical operations of the law of 1793 the report said:

Under the act referred to, the Department of State has been going on, for more than forty years, issuing patents on every application, without any examination into the merits or novelty of the invention. And the evils which necessarily result from the law as it now exists must continue to increase and multiply daily until Congress shall put a stop to them. Some of them are as follows:

I. A considerable portion of some of the patents granted are worthless and void, as conflicting and infringing upon one another, or upon public rights not subject to patent privileges, arising from either a want of due attention to the specification of claim, or from the ignorance of the patentees of the state of the arts and manufactures, and of the inventions made in other countries, and even in our own.

2. The country becomes flooded with patent monopolies, embarrassing to bona fide patentees, whose rights are thus invaded from all sides; and not less embarrassing to the community generally, in the use of even the most common machinery and long known improvements in the arts and common manufactures of the country.

3. Out of this interference and collision of patents and privileges, a great number of lawsuits arise, which are daily increasing in an alarming degree, onerous to the courts, ruinous to the parties, and injurious to society.

4. It opens the door to frauds, which have already become extensive and serious. It is represented to the committee that it is not uncommon for persons to copy patented machines in the model room; and having made some slight immaterial alterations, they apply in the next room for patents. There being no power to refuse them, patents are issued of course. Thus prepared they go forth on a retailing expedition, selling out their patent rights for states, counties and townships, to those who have no means at hand of detecting the imposition, and who find, when it is too late, that they have purchased what the venders had no right to sell, and which they obtain thereby no right to use. This speculation in patent rights has become a regular business, and several hundred thousand dollars, it is estimated, are paid annually for void patents, many of which are thus fraudulently obtained.

In this collision and interference of patents, the original and meritorious inventor sees his invention, to the perfection of which he has devoted much time and expense, pirated from him, and he must forego the reward which the law was intended to secure to him in the exclusive right it grants, or he must become involved in numerous and expensive lawsuits in distant and various sections of the country to protect and confirm his rights. If he be wise he will generally avoid the latter and submit to the former alternative of injustice, to which the Government, as the law now is, makes itself accessory. The practice is scarcely less reprehensible of taking out patents for what has long been in public use, and, what every one has, therefore, a right to use. The patentee in such cases being armed with the apparent authority of the Government, having the sanction of the highest officers, the seal of the state, scours the country, and, by threats of prosecution, compels those who are