But that patent system was based upon what I regard as an inferior point of view. A man in England could get a patent for something that some one else had invented in a foreign country if he brought it into England.

When we established our patent system in this country under the provision of the Constitution, which says that Congress shall have power for the promotion of the useful arts to grant to an inventor a monopoly of his invention for a limited term that introduced a radically new idea, which has been most fruitful, and which has, to a large extent, been copied in other parts of the world, although the copies have not always been as good as the original.

Thus it is perfectly clear that it is inventive thought that our laws reward by a patent; that is, the investigation, the study, and the correlation of the forces of nature, the analysis of them, and the development of methods and machinery which will harness those forces for the service of man-that is the basis of our industrial progress, which, of course, has been tremendous during the last 100 years; and has been particularly accentuated during the last 15 years.

The way to bring about this industrial progress that is at the basis of prosperity and at the base of social life, is to promote the activity of that sort of invention, so that our law, from the beginning, has been that if a man will think and work and study, and as a result of that thought and work and study, will produce a new method or a new machine he shall have as a reward the right to control the use of that invention, to control the use of that machine, or to control the use of such a method, as the case may be, for a limited term, and the result of that is the very simple recognition that it is not a matter of bringing a new industry into the realm or of starting a business, but it is a matter of analyzing, investigating, and establishing new relations of the forces of nature, so that they are controlled for the benefit of mankind; that is the basis of sound prosperity; it is the recognition of that fact that has made us the great industrial Nation that we are, and in so far as that idea has been developed in foreign countries, to a large extent they have developed it along the same lines.

But we have been preeminently a Nation of inventors, as you know, and the result is our present industrial situation, of which we are and should be proud.

That proposition, of course, involves the taking away from the people of the right to do for a limited time things that otherwise they might properly do, because in the absence of a patent the public has the right to use anything it can use, and from the beginning it has been the most important effort in the development of the law, which has been consistently applied by Congress and by the courts in the spirit of the Constitution, to bring about that result that was best for the public interest. It is a great mistake for anyone to think for a moment that the patent law is primarily intended to reward inventors, because it is not. It is intended to develop industry for the benefit of all the people and is based upon the recognition of what there can be no question is a sound proposition, that the correct way to do it is to reward those who have worked out an invention intelligently in this perfectly simple and automatic method. They might be rewarded by paying them money, but nobody can tell how much an inventor should be paid, and if they simply reward him by saying, "You can control the invention for a time," the thing is automatic and takes care of itself.

Congress and the courts from the beginning have endeavored to develop the patent system in such a way that it will encourage inventors to the limit, because that is what must be done; but at the same time the public should be protected, the people should be protected against any attempt to keep them out of a field which is covered by a patent when the patent is not a good patent, and the issue of patents that are not good should be prevented. But at the same time the public faith, as Chief Justice Marshall said in the case of Grant against Raymond, is pledged to the maintenance of the right of the inventor where he has a real right.

Now, gentlemen, these bills are all predicated upon that underlying proposition that Congress and the courts, as has been the case in the past, want to perfect this patent system and accomplish two things. First, to give to the inventor that reward to which he is entitled, because he has made an invention and thereby advanced the public interest; and, second, to see that in the machin

ery by which those inventors are protected and their rights enforced after the patents have been issued, there is no injustice, and it is just as important that there should be no bad patents issued or sustained as it is that there should be good patents issued.

When you come to this question of the collection of damages and profits, it is just as important that the public should not have to pay more than they should as it is that the patentee should receive what he ought to have. Those propositions are the basis of this particular legislation.

I have been practicing patent law for 40 years, and have had intimate association with business in a professional capacity during those 40 years, and I should like to have you understand how firmly I believe that the patent system of the United States is of the utmost importance; that it is at the foundation of our prosperity; that if it is weakened in any way it will be a shock to us from which we can not recover; but, at the same time, we must always consider the right of the proposition, we must consider the necessity that there should be a patent granted only when there is an invention that entitles a man to a patent under the law, and that there should not be a patent granted which trespasses upon what ought to be the public domain. And when you come to the enforcement of patent rights it is of the utmost importance that the public should know as soon as possible exactly what patents are good and what are bad; that the public should know as soon as possible the scope and meaning of every patent; that the system of enforcing patents should be such as to bring out the truth and establish at the earliest possible moment exactly what portion of the domain is hedged off by the patent, so that the public can not enter upon it, in order that the inventors and those who work with them and the men who put up the money required to develop inventions may be sure of their ground and know as soon as possible whether they have a patent or not; and in order that the public, which has a right to use anything which is not validly patented, may know as early as possible whether it must keep away from a certain field, or whether it has a right to enter that field.

All of these bills are aimed at the improved efficiency of the patent system so that it may be developed in such a way as to operate for the public benefit, by protecting the inventors, promoting the interest of inventors, and, at the same time, safeguarding the public in such a way that they will not be encouraged to infringe improperly and unlawfully because of errors in the procedure in granting patents or enforcing them or wrongly held as infringers.

Gentlemen, you can easily see what a difficult thing it is to decide whether a man, who purports to be an inventor and brings out something which he says is new, has really made an invention or not. In the first place, if it was known before, he has not made an invention, although he may himself have not known anything about the prior development of his idea; but he has not made an invention if it was known before. We have men in the Patent Office to investigate that question, but that is a very difficult proposition, because it happens not infrequently and will always happen no matter how well the Patent Office is organized, no matter how intelligently it does its business, that patents will be issued that are not valid.

Moreover, the English language, or any language, is difficult to present in such a form as to have the meaning absolutely definite and clear, and when a patent is issued it very frequently happens that it is not clear as to what the meaning is. It very frequently happens that an investigation into the prior art shows that the claim of a patent must have a certain meaning (although it might have two or three different meanings), it must have a certain meaning to be valid, and the courts have to investigate and study and determine exactly what the language means. So that whenever a patent is issued there are questions of its validity and construction which are of the utmost importance and must be settled before anybody knows what worth that patent really has.

When you come into court, then, again, there is the exceedingly difficult question of infringement. A man very seldom badly infringes a patent. He says he wants to improve on it, and he thinks that if he adopts a method of a certain kind he will be outside the patent, and the court has to determine the ultimate question as to whether

a man who is charged with infringement is or is not an infringer. So it is a very serious matter to keep the balance right in the Patent Office and the courts, between the inventor who must be protected on the one hand, and the public on the other hand, who must have its rights preserved against patents that are not valid and against a construction of a patent which is not fair and reasonable, and which would give to the alleged inventor something to which he was not entitled.

I want to emphasize that side of it, because after all my years at this work I feel more strongly than ever that in considering this question too much attention is sometimes paid to the mere matter of the inventor's reward. Of course, you have got to reward him; that is a matter of sound public policy; but you have also to protect the public, and every one of these bills now before the committee is based upon the proposition that we are dealing with this matter in the public interest.

I am going to save to the last the question of the organization of a court of patent appeals, which is most important, and say first a word or two about the other bills.

The first one, which I shall pass over very briefly, is the one relating to the Patent Office as a separate organization. The Patent Office is now a part of the Interior Department, but here is a bill which provides that it shall be an independent department.

Now, gentlemen, it was the carefully thought-out conclusion of your committee that the Patent Office would be better able to do its work efficiently and to get the results which we seek if it were an independent department. There is no logical reason why it should be connected. with the Interior Department or with any other department. Its work is of an utterly different kind from the other work carried on in that department or from the work of any other of the great departments of the Government.

Its organization is complete and independent. At the present time, under the law, the Secretary of the Interior has very little to do with the actual administration of the Patent Office. There is no question that he could be eliminated without the slightest danger or the slightest embarrassment of any sort or kind, and the committee came to the conclusion, after giving the matter full considera