We ought to have had a show merely of Inventions, Machines and Implements exceeding the entire contents of the American Department--ought to have had, apart from any question of National credit, if only because the inventors' interests would have had much more than we actually have, had the state of the British Patent-Laws been less outrageous than it is. A patent here costs ten times as much as in the United States, and is worth little when you have it--that is, it is not even an opinion that the patentee has really invented anything, but merely an evidence that he claimed to have done so at such a date, and a permission to prove that he actually did, if he can. In other words : a patent gives a permission and an opportunity to contend legally for your rights ; and if the holder is known to have money enough, it generally suffices ; if not, he can, and will be not only plundered with impunity, but defied and laughed at. A bill radically revising the British Patent-Laws is now on its way through Parliament, but in its absence many American inventors refused to expose themselves to a loss of their inventions by exhibiting them at the Fair ; and who can blame them? (Glances at Europe in Series of Letters. Dewitt & Davenport, New York. 1851.)
PATENT, in law, is the exclusive right of using and vending a certain composition or combination of matter, as a medicine or a machine. This right is not derived from the law of nature, as the whole field of inventions and improvements is open to all men, and one cannot monopolize a part of it by prior discoveries. In Miller versus Taylor, 4 Burrow's Reports, 2387, Mr. Justice Yates says that the mere labor and study of the inventor will establish no property in the invention, and no right to exclude others from making the same instrument, and that it is well known that no such property can exist after the invention is published. By the common law of England, monopolies were declared to be generally void, and patents for new inventions, being a species of monopolies, would, according to this doctrine, be void by that law. But they seem to form an exception to this rule; for it was held that the king could confer on the inventor of any useful manufacture or art the power of using it for reasonable time. But the law of patents, as it now stands in England, rests upon a statute of 21 Jac. I, c. iii, and in the U. States on statute Feb. 21, 1793, and April 17, 1800. In France, until 1790, inventors were generally obliged to keep their discoveries secret, in order to secure to themselves a small part of the benefit of them. In an early period of the French revolution, a law was passed in favor of new inventions, formed on the basis of the English statute. The French law of Jan. 7, 1810, declares that every discovery or new invention, in every species of useful industry, is the property of its author. . .
What is patentable? In general, any invention of a new composition of matter not known or used before, or any new and useful improvement in any art, machine, or manufacture, or composition of matter. The invention must be new. In England, a Manufacture newly brought into the kingdom from beyond the sea, though not new there, is allowed by the statute of James; because that statute allow a patent for any new manufacture within this realm. By the patent law of the U. States, if the thing patented was not originally discovered by the patentee, but had been in use, or had been described in some public work anterior to the supposed discovery by the patentee, or if he has surreptitiously obtained a patent for the discovery of another person, the patent is void. In France, by the law of Jan. 7, 1810, whoever introduces into that kingdom a foreign discovery shall enjoy the same advantages as if he were the inventor. In England, the publisher of an invention is enititled to a patent, whether he be the inventor or not. . .
Duration of the Patent. In England and the U. States, patents are granted for a term not exceeding fourteen years. The time in England may be prolonged by a private act, and, in the U. States, by act of congress. In France, by the law already mentioned, patents are given for five, ten or fifteen years, at the option of the inventor ; but this last term is never to be prolonged without a particular decree of the legislature. The duration for imported discoveries is not to extend beyond the term fixed for the privilege of the original inventor in his own country. In France, if the inventor obtains a patent in a foreign country after having obtained one in France, the patent is annulled.
(Encyclopaedia Americana. B. B. Mussey & Co, Boston. 1851.)