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The Green Bag
licensor and licensee, lessor and lessee, or bailer and bailee (1) restricting such purchaser, licensee, lessee and bailee from obtaining any article from any other person; or (2) imposing any restric tion upon the use of the article so sold, licensed, leased or bailed; or (3) making any discrimination in the price, rental or license based upon whether the pur chaser, licensee, lessee or bailee uses such articles furnished by some other person, or any discrimination based upon whether the purchaser, licensee, lessee or bailee takes articles of a partic ular quantity or aggregate price; or (4) restraining such seller, licensor, lessor or bailee from disposing of an article to any specified persons, ortopersonsdoingbusiness within specified districts or territories. These bills, in one form or another, all prohibit every kind of so-called "license restrictions." In the hearings that have been held during the past few weeks by the House Committee on Patents, — primarily re garding an omnibus measure called the •Oldfield bill, which embodies most of these proposals, — discussion has been confined, by request of the Committee, to the subjects of "compulsory licenses" and "license restrictions"; with the result that the fundamental principles of the American patent system have been more thoroughly examined and expounded than at any time during the past generation.
strictest scrutiny. Few could have an ticipated, however, the unanimity with which inventors, manufacturers, dealers and consumers justified the American patent system in all the respects in which these proposals aimed to alter it. Fewer still could have expected what the hearings finally demonstrated, that those features of the American patent system that were threatened by these proposals were in reality potent means for realizing the most "progres sive" ideals of industrial freedom. Mr. Louis D. Brandeis, of Boston, voiced this view when he analyzed the questions raised by these proposals to amend the patent laws. As he ex plained to the House Committee on Patents, he had "given considerable thought and investigation to the three questions: First, as to whether there should be placed a limitation upon the right now enjoyed under a patent to fix resale prices. Second, whether there should be some amendment or law which would abrogate the rule established by the court in the mimeograph case. And third, whether there should be legisla tion with respect to the working clause and compulsory licenses." Approaching these questions from an advanced "progressive" point of view, the conclusions that Mr. Brandeis reached were substantially in agree ment with those of most of the inventors, manufacturers, dealers and consumers who appeared before the Committee:
II While the entire legal and political fabric of the nation is being measured and tested to determine its adaptability and efficiency under present conditions, no one could have been surprised that the American patent system — for which the founders of the Republic had pro vided by specific mention in the federal Constitution — should have received the
It seems to me that the evils which exist are not evils resulting in any large measure from the existence of those rules to which I have re ferred and which are now the rules of law in this country; that the evils which exist consequently would not be removed by a change in these rules and that on the other hand, a change such as has been contemplated might result, and I be lieve would result, in a very serious disturbance of business enterprises which are on the whole beneficial to the community.
