license for the faculty of requiring practically absolute obligation of working patents, Article 5; and more precise regulation in Article 11 of temporary protection of industrial property of expositions.

The maintenance of the rights of third persons legitimizes the so-called rights of personal possession. This may be illustrated as follows: a person files an application for a patent and the patent is granted: this patent gives him, for a certain time, exclusive monopoly of exploitation of the invention. However, if another person actually used the same invention prior to the filing by the first person, he keeps the right of personally continuing its working contemporarily with the patentee. This right of working is personal and cannot be transferred to another company. This leads to grave consequences in international affairs. For instance, a manufacturer filed a patent application in Brussels on January 1, 1925. The 31st of December, following, he files the same application in France by right of priority. April 1, 1926, he finds that his invention is being worked in Paris by a third party. The latter pleads the right of personal possession. The manufacturer having the patent must determine whether this invention was really worked in France before January 1, 1926. If it has been, for instance on December 31, 1925, it is covered by the right of personal possession. It can be covered during a whole year starting from the time when the invention could be known on account of the first filing in a Unionist country. The exploiter when sued by the patentee can pretend to be ignorant of a patent which has actually been available to the public for a year in a neighboring country. The patentee may consequently have trouble in making use of his patent on account of unfair competition; the right of priority may become imaginary. In the sub-committee at the Hague, four countries defended the right of third persons, i. e. Cuba, Hungary, Italy and Japan. In the general committee, the Netherlands delegation proposed a compromise as follows: "Nevertheless the facts accomplished in the interval cannot authorize any action

against third persons in good faith". The Italian delegation found this clause insufficient and the French delegation thought it superfluous; it was finally withdrawn. It may perhaps be possible for the signatory states of the Acts of the Hague to decide upon an additional convention modifying Article 4 of the Convention of the Union before the coming Conference of Revision to be held in London in 1933.

Substitution of the system of obligatory license for the power of unionist countries to require practically absolute obligation of working patents has been proposed for many years, and on the occasion of the Hague Conference it was decided by the Netherlands Administration and the International Burcau to replace line 2 of Article 5 by the following: "However, the legislation of every Unionist country can require working of the patent with the double restriction that the patentee will have, in every country of the Union, a minimum delay of three years, counted from the grant of the patent in this country, for putting the working into effect, and that the penalty for non-working in the legal period-and this only in case the patentee cannot satisfactorily explain the cause of his innet'on-cannot be the forfeiture of the patent, Lut only obligatory license."

When the Conference met, the United States in their tun presented a still more radical proposal which aimed at alsolute suppression of obligatory working without the compromise of the obligatory license. This was the proposal that was put to the vote. It was defeated by 22 against 2. The disenssien was then turned to the proposal of the Netherlands and the Bureau International and all the delegates present accepted it, excepting four, -those of Italy, Japan, Poland and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croates and Slovenes. The author advises a thorough campaign of propaganda in the opposing countries.

In regard to regulation of temporary protection at expositions, the present state of affairs is very unsatisfactory. The Program of the Conference of the Hague took

up the problem by proposing three texts to the Assembly but after animated discussion only the following results were obtained:

1. Question of duration of the protection. The Program proposed to fix it at six months starting from the opening of the exposition but the Conference did not take any interest in this proposal. On the contrary, the question of knowing whether the period of temporary protec tion at expositions should or should not be added to that fixed by Article 4 of the Convention of the Union for calculation of the delay of priority was discussed and it was decided it should not be cumulative.

2. Question of time of origin of the protection. The Program proposed that this should be the date of the introduction of the protected article in the exposition. The text that was finally adopted by the General Committee was as follows:

"If later, the right of priority is pleaded, the Administration of each country can make the period start from the date of the introduction of the prodret in the exposition.

Each country can require, as proof of identity of the object on exposition and of the date of introduction, verifying doet ments as judged necessary."

It should be possible to succeed in substituting for the word "can". the word "must" in the first phrase of the second line of the rew Article 11, by the use of persuasion with the contracting countries.

Curious Things People Invent

Those of us who are interested in freak patents will find many of the old favorites listed in an article by Edwin Ketchum in the September "Popular Science Monthly." Included, with fanciful illustrations, are the beard grinder safety razor; the alarm bed; the self-raising hat; chickens' eyeglasses; anti-collision train; hair planter; dimple maker; lazy tongs railroad safety gate, and oth

ers.

Patent Extention Bill Opposed as Unfair to Automotive Manufacturers

The manager of the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce patent department Robert A. Brannigan, calls attention to objectionable features of proposed law which would extend life of patents to inventors who served during war in a letter to Automotive Industries, published September 9, 1926. This bill provided for an extension of such patents for a term of seven years from the expiration of the normal term. The American Patent Law Association held a referendum on this bill and expressed its disapproval in overwhelming numbers. This bill S-3745 was later replaced by bill S-4480 which provides an extension amounting to three times the length of the patentee's service in the armed forces of the United States. In his letter, Mr. Brannigan writes "a patent represents a contrast between the inventor and the public at large and if the terms of the contract are varied by one party, it is liable to work great hardships on the other. If in the middle of the life of a patent, an extension is given, no manufacturer or other concern that uses the invention will know where they stand."

Patent Classification

The India-Rubber Journal reports that Dr. A. P. Thurston in a paper delivered before the recent meeting of the British Association at Oxford spoke very highly of the system of classification of patent specifications adopted by the British Patent Office and contrasted it very favorably with the American and German systems. "Every specification is indexed thoroughly for all matter of interest, whether claimed or not, and appears in the indexes under all relevant sub-headings. The published classification and allotment of cases under it is exactly that used by the examining staff. This is not so in the U. S. A. office, where repeat copies are placed in the official search files, that are met only by cross-references in the printed key."

M. O. P.

CURRENT COURT DECISIONS

FEDERAL YEAST CORPORATION v. FLEISCHMANN CO 13 Fed. (2d)-570.

This case is a cross-appeal from the District Court of the U. S. for the District of Maryland at Baltimore. The Plaintiff, the Fleischmann Co., obtained a judgment (8 F. (2d) 186) holding one of the patents in suit invalid.

There were two patents both owned by Ptf., in suit. Both of them were for yeast-making processes. The patent to Hayduck, (No. 1,449,103) was held valid and infringed, while the patent to Nilsson and Harrison (No. 1,449,127) was held infringed but invalid. (See-8 J. P. O. S. 384 for an account of the case in the District Court).

(1) The Court (through Circuit Judge Rose) is satisfied, in reviewing the evidence rendered below, that the lower Court was right in holding the Hayduck patent valid. It is pointed out that many workers, some of them among the most highly skilled of the world's experts in yeast-making art, were on the outlook for every possible improvement in the methods of the yeast industry-yet none of them made the Hayduck discovery. If they had known of the Hayduck process of propagating and accelerating the growth of yeast by the use of nutrient mixtures and inorganic nitrogeneous compounds-they would have made prompt use of it and communicated their discoveries to the practical men of the industry.

(2) The Nilsson and Harrison patent was filed in the Patent Office in 1919 almost two years prior to the Hayduck patent. The latter patent was entitled, however, to priority because as early as 1915-Hayduck had applied for a German patent on the same invention, and his American application by virtue of the Nolan Act is to be treated as if it had been then made. The Nilsson et al process was distinguished from the Hayduck patent merely by the fact that in it they recommended the use of one special sugar material and a particular inorganic am