The Green Bag
408
been said, in civil cases, that it is not necessary that all the dealers in a certain community should be in a combination in order to con stitute a monopoly. See Nester v. Brewing Co., 161 Pa. St. 473, 481, where the court
said: ‘The application of the rules does not depend upon the number of those who may be implicated, or to the extent of space, in cluded in the combination.’ In Richardson. v. Buhl, 77 Mich. 632, 658, the court said; ‘All combinations among persons or corporations for the purpose‘of regulating or controlling the price of merchandise, or any of the necessaries of life, are monopolies and
intolerable.’ Cf. definition of monopoly in Black's Law Dictionary, quoted in 29 R. I. 260."
It is not easy, he continues, to define the nature of a monopoly, or to formulate a fair
rule regarding the reasonableness or unrea sonableness of rates.
Accordingly, he thinks
the best solution of the problem, is to say,
with Judge Taft in the Addyston Pipe case :—
"That trade agreements are not punishable under the rules of the common law, and then to look to the legislature to pass adequate and definite measures to protect the public. Clearly some combinations, both of labor and capital, should be restrained or punished. It is intolerable that dealers in the necessaries of life should have the power to extort ex orbitant profits from the consumer by any means whatever. The demands of labor are often unreasonable and impose hardship, not only on the employer and the purchaser of the products of labor. but upon the laboring men themselves. A remedy is necessary, but an adequate one cannot be found in the com mon law as it has, up to this time, developed. The criminal law, in particular, should be definite and exact, and not be made to depend upon the shifting economic opinions of the courts. For these reasons legislation, not the common law, should, in cases relating to business agreements, define the crime as well as impose the penalty."
The Needed Reform of Patent Procedure HILE our patent system is the best in the world, the enormous increase in the number of applications, and the increasing
complexity and refinement of invention, have rendered it impossible for the government to maintain a proper standard of efficiency with the limited facilities at its disposal,” says Mr. William Macomber, author of “The Fixed
Law of Patents," in the North American Review for June. The Patent Oflioe plant and force should be increased, and this may be done without cost to the government, because the net earnings every year show a need lessly large profit. Moreover, patent procedure should be made certain, speedy, and inexpensive. For “the practice and procedure in patent causes is so cumbersome and slow and so expensive as to render the judicial establishment of a patent a luxury wholly beyond all but the few. This is creating a monopoly founded not upon inventive genius but upon financial power to dominate the field." To illustrate, this is the prevailing
method of determining the validity of a patent in the courts :-— “When the cause is at issue the taking of testimony begins—not in court, but here and there, all over the country, before notaries. The testimony is laboriously written out on
the typewriter.
We go wherever a witness
happens to reside. Everything goes into the record; there is no one to rule on the evidence. As an illustration of the tramping that is done, I cite a case within my own experience. Testimony was taken in Detroit, Bufl'alo, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Troy, Buffalo, Chicago, Schenectady and Detroit, in the order given. This is common. "From one to three years may complete a record seldom containing less than five hun dred pages and sometimes assuming the pro portions of the automobile cases, recently decided, which made a record of thirty-six large octa'uo volumes. Years may elapse before argument and decision. Then comes the appeal, reprinting the record and briefs, and
