Patent Sesquicentennial

The U. S. Patent Office in Washington remembers a story about a patent examiner who, in 1870, got discouraged. In 1870 there were no automobiles, airplanes, streamlined trains, steam turbines, oil-burning ships or Diesel engines; no movies, radio, television, electric refrigeration, vacuum cleaners, air conditioning; no rayon, nylon, Cellophane, stainless steel, chromium plate; no linotypes, color photography, wirephotos; not even a decent golf ball. Nevertheless the discouraged examiner looked around, decided that everything of importance had been invented, quit his job to look for something permanent.

Celebrated in Washington this week, by proclamation of Franklin Roosevelt following joint resolutions of the Senate and House, was the Sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary of the U. S. patent system. The first patent act--passed by Congress on April 10, 1790 and signed by President George Washington--set up a three-man patent board: the Secretaries of War and State and the Attorney General. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson was also keeper of records. His staff was a part-time clerk. An inventor himself (a mold board for plows, revolving chair, combination stool and walking stick), Jefferson read every application that came in. First patent went to one Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for "making pot and pearl ashes." In those days a patent cost about $4. (Now it is $60 plus legal fees.) John Fitch paid $4.39 for his steamboat patent. The part-time clerk pocketed the fees.

From 1790 to 1836, about 10.000 patents were issued; since 1836. about 2,200,000. The present rate is around 40,000 a year (in 1939: 43,070). Of these, probably 90% to 95% will never reach the manufacturing stage. About two out of every five patent applications are turned down. Today the Patent Office occupies eight and one-half acres of floor space, gives work to 1,354 people, of whom 703 are trained examiners. Its annual printing bill runs over $1,000,000 a year. But the fees usually turn up a surplus, and the Treasury last year got back $127,000.

Many an idea is patentable but nevertheless ludicrous. The patent examiners in Washington have no right to turn an invention down just because they privately think it is funny. A classic patent was issued, some decades ago, to a man who invented a way to prevent dogs from committing a nuisance against buildings.

His idea was to electrify a strip of metal around the building's base. When a dog stopped to relieve himself, an electric current would pass up the stream, shock the dog and dissuade him from repeating his act. There was no question of the novelty of that. Scrupulous patent attorneys try to dissuade the concocters of such whizz-bangs from wasting their money on patents.

The U. S. Supreme Court had one of the merriest times in its history, in 1888, during an infringement suit involving men's underwear. Contested device: a reinforcing patch at the crotch to prevent splitting of the seam. Counsel for the alleged infringer waved a pair of red flannels, asked indignantly whether a patent should be permitted to take away the ancient and sacred right of wives to patch their husbands' underwear. He won his case. Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller laughed so hard he nearly fell under the bench.

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