ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the business of this Office for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1885: Number of applications for patents received.. Number of applications for design patents received. 32,662 Number of applications for reissue patents received 1,071 156 1,126 673 Total.... 35, 688 Number of caveats filed 2,515 Number of labels registered Number of patents granted, including reissues and designs. 22,928 1,092 337 Total....... 24, 357 Number of patents withheld for non-payment of final fees 2,838 13, 332 RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES. Receipts from all sources Expenditures (including printing and binding, but not including contingent expenses)... Surplus...... $1,074,974 35 934, 123 11 140,851 24 COMPARATIVE STATEMENT SHOWING THE INCREASE IN THE WORK. Number of applications for patents, including reissues, designs, trade-marks, and labels, received during the fiscal year ending June 30— NUMBER OF APPLICATIONS AWAITING ACTION ON THE PART OF THE The foregoing summary furnishes a general idea of the condition of the business of this Office as it stood at the end of the last fiscal year. It will be observed that the receipts of the Office aggregate a trifle less than those of the year next preceding. The greatest falling off oocurred during the first half of the last fiscal year, and is probably attributable largely to the fact of the Presidential and general elections which occurred, as there usually is during such periods a material diminution in our revenues. However, it is true that the amount received during the last quarter of the last fiscal year demonstrates that the staguation was but temporary, as the receipts of the Office during this last-mentioned time were more than $16,000 in excess of the amounts received during the corresponding three months of the preceding year. It will also be observed that the number of applications awaiting action on the 30th of June last was more than 40 per cent. less than those of the previous year, although the force of the Office is quite inadequate to meet the reasonable demands upon it with the promptness which seems desirable. The delays in the examination of appli cations for patents many times work serious hardship. At this time there are 177 classes of invention, which classes are again divided in 3,405 subclasses, distributed among 27 examining divisions. Thirty years ago there were but 13 classes. This vast difference fairly illus trates the growth of the industrial arts during that period Since 1855, 494,588 applications for patents have been filed in this Office, and 334,080 patents granted. During the entire year of 1855 there were 4,436 applications received, and 2,012 patents granted. During 1884 the applications received numbered 33,889, and the patents granted 22,928. I beg to remind you that even this enormous gain in the number of applications received does not fairly indicate the proportionate increase in the labor of examination. The field of invention is widening so wonderfully, and the lines have become so finely drawn in most instances, that the greatest care and skill are required to determine accurately what is new and what is old. Every class of invention has an unwritten history that cannot be learned in a day, and consequently every year the experience of an examiner becomes more and more valuable. In this view it would be wise, I think, to fix the compensation of this class of employés accordingly. Nearly forty years ago Congress established the salary of a primary examiner at $2,500 per year (9 Stat. 231), and to day he is paid $100 less yearly. The salary of the assistant ex-• aminers was established in 1855, and has never been increased, while at the same time the wages of skilled men in every branch of industry in the country have greatly advanced during the past thirty years. In view of this, many of the examining corps each year find it to their interest to resign and enter the practice of patent law. Thus the office becomes a preparatory school for those desiring to enter the patent business. Under these circumstances I have recommended in my estimates that the principal examiners receive the annual $2,500 compensation fixed by law so long ago, and I most earnestly commend it to your favorable consideration. Since I assumed charge of the duties of the office I have studied its needs, aud feel that I am fully prepared to sustain the desirability of the increase recommended. The office is also greatly in need of messenger boys. They can undoubtedly be employed at a compensation of $360 per year, and I have consequently submitted estimates for the employment of twenty-five. This would only augment the annual appropriation $9,000, which is a smali expenditure in proportion to the great advantage that would accrue to the office. As it is now, the examiners are frequently required to go from one part of the building to another for material that a boy could as well obtain. With such an addition to the force of the office the examiners could give more time to their appropriate work. In other words, a boy at $30 a month would do an errand that an examiner at $200 a month is frequently required to do because he has no messenger. The total increase recommended is one hundred. The increase in the force of examiners by the act of July 7, 1884, has made a very perceptible decrease in the applications awaiting action. If Congress would provide the increase now recommended, I feel sure that the Office would be enabled to bring the work up to date and keep it there. ROOM. The suggestion of an increase of force necessarily carries with it the necessity for more room. The condition of the office in this respect has frequently been brought to the attention of Congress. I believe the importance of it has been stated by every Commissioner in his annual report for the past ten years, without securing any material relief. The room at the command of the Office at present is totally inadequate for its requirements. Business is retarded and health impaired in consequence of the limited space allotted. No well-regulated mercantile house would suffer the inconveniences to which this office is compelled to submit on account of want of room and force necessary to properly dispatch business. Inventors are continually complaining, and they cannot understand why their work is delayed when the fees they pay the Government are ample to supply all needful facilities. It is not believed that it was ever the intention to make the Patent Office a bureau of revenue, and I submit that it is due the inventors that they should have prompt, intelligent, and careful action upon their applications for patents when the fees which they pay are more than sufficient to meet all the incidental expenses. We hear no complaint because of the amount of fees exacted, and the patrons of the Office would willingly submit to an increase in that direction if it would hasten well-considered action in the Office; but no increase is necessary. They only ask that Congress shall use more of the money paid into the office for the purpose for which it was intended. This is all they ask, and I submit that Congress should not do less. LEGISLATION. Modifications of some of the existing statutes which affect this Office have been several times suggested to Congress during the past few years, but for some reason the suggestions offered have not been adopted. Some of the changes suggested would be in an eminent degree salutary, and I cannot refrain from adverting to some of the more important ones. Section 4885 requires every patent to bear date as of a day not later than six months from the time at which it was passed and allowed and notice thereof sent to the applicant, and if the final fee is not paid within that period the patent is to be withheld. Under this section an inventor is allowed six months within which to pay the final fee, and the patent must bear date within that time. The Office can make no move toward preparing the case for issue before the payment of the fee, and it requires about two weeks after the payment of the fee to prepare the patent for the signature of the Commissioner and the Secretary of the Interior. If the patent were to be antedated in order to bring its date within the six months from the time it was allowed and notice thereof sent to the inventor, it would shorten its term to that extent, for no inventor could operate under his patent until he received it. To issue the patent, and yet keep within the statute, it is the practice of the Office to reallow the application in case the fee is paid so late that it cannot bear the date within the first period of six months. The legality of this practice has been questioned, it being considered an evasion of the law, but that appears to be the only way of accomplishing what the law intended. The Office has found it absolutely necessary to issue all the patents for each week, respectively, on a certain day, and if the statute were construed literally, and no reallowance permitted, the Office would be required to issue on every day in the week unless the notices of allowance were only sent on a specified day of each week. It is unquestionably wise to make the law certain, and I would urge such an alteration in the section named as would remedy the defect to which attention has been directed. Section 4887 of the Revised Statutes requires all patents granted for an invention which has been previously patented in a foreign country to be so limited as to expire at the same time with the foreign patent having the shortest term. This statute was originally enacted in 1839, and up to 1880 all patents issued by this Office were granted for the full term, without any limitation being expressed in the grant, but since that date it has been the practice to require all applicants to make oath whether any foreign patents have been obtained on the device for which protection is sought, and, if any, they have been enumerated in the patent issued here. This requirement is often difficult to observe, although it seems to be a necessity. Doubts frequently arise as to the proper legal ate of the foreign patent. In some countries its date is as of the day when the application is filed, although the patent may not issue for a year thereafter. Again, the value of a patent is greatly impaired when so limited, for its tenure is undetermined and is dependent upon the life of the foreign patent having the shortest term. In some instances the failure to make annual payments, or the non-fulfillment of some other condition subsequent, will terminate the patent, and with it expires the patent granted by this Government. I am unable to see that any injury would result from amending the statute so that all patents shall be effective for a term of seventeen years irrespective of foreign patents. Such a statute would give to the patent a definite and certain term which it does not now have. This amendment has been frequently urged upon Congress and the necessity for it so clearly stated that I consider it unnecessary to say more as to its desirability. Again, the statute relative to assignments of patents and to the conveyance of rights thereunder (section 4,898) provides only for the record of three kinds of instrument: (1) of an assignment of the entire patent (interest), (2) of an assignment of some interest in such patent, and (3) a "grant and conveyance of some exclusive right" thereunder. Under the statute these assignments or this grant and conveyance may consist simply of "an instrument in writing." Such instruments are not required to be sealed, witnessed, or acknowledged. This I consider a grave omission. In my judgment, the law should require every conveyance, if not every assignment, to be properly witnessed, attested, and acknowledged, and to unmistakably identify the patent to which it relates. As the law now stands, licenses are not required, as I think they should be, to be recorded. A patentee may divest himself of all his interest through the medium of a license and afterwards make a sale, or pretended sale, to a third party. Such license not being entitled to record, the licensee may safely pocket it and the inno cent purchaser has no protection. Even the instruments entitled to record need not be recorded until three months after their date, and meantime much mischief may be accomplished. I urge that this recording statute should be amended. Section 4936 of the statute authorizes the Treasurer of the United States to pay back any sum or sums of money to any person who has through mistake paid the same into the Treasury as for fees accruing at the Patent Office, * upon a certificate thereof being made to the Treasurer by the Commissioner of Patents." The Treasury Department construes the law to mean that when money has been deposited to the credit of the Treasurer of the United States as for fees accruing at this Office, and has been covered into the Treasury, it cannot be refunded except by special act of Congress. If this section could be so amended as to authorize this Office to refund from its current receipts money paid by mistake into the Treasury on account of fees in this Office, much labor would be saved to both Departments, and the necessity for petitioning Congress would no longer exist. The act of July 12, 1870 (Statute XVI, page 244), provided for an Assistant Commissioner of Patents, and defined his duties, but this act was repealed by omission from the Revised Statutes. It is manifestly desirable that his duties be clearly prescribed by the statute. Under the practice that now obtains he performs such duties as are assigned to him by the Commissioner. If this practice ha legislative sanction, it would remove the uncertainty that now exists as to his authority. Under the act of May 18, 1872, relative to the publication of the Official Gazette, which is issued on Tuesday of each week, Representatives and Senators were each entitled to designate eight public libraries to which the Gazette would be sent without charge. The Office is still operating under the provisions of this act, although I find it was repealed by the Revised Statutes, so that there is not at this time any authority of law for distributing copies of the Gazette in manner indicated. I call attention to this fact in order that Congress may take such steps in the matter as in their judgment may seem wise. The publication of the Gazette has been authorized in the appropriation acts for each succeeding year, but no provision has been made for its distribution as intended by the act of 1872. By that act the subscription price was fixed at no less than $5; that is the only act in which it is mentioned. At the time that price was determined the Gazette was less than half its present size. The total number of pages in it for 1872 was 2,230, while for 1884 it contains 4,938. I think it is safe to say that at $5 per annum it is the cheapest publication of its character in the world. I would suggest that the 6287 1--7 |