The Proposed Patent Law Amendments Under Article I, section 8, sub-divi sion 8, of the federal Constitution, Congrees has power "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing, for limited times, to authors and in ventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Accordingly, section 4884 of the Re vised Statutes has been enacted, pro viding that a patent owner shall have "the exclusive right to make, use and vend the invention or discovery." This "exclusive right" is in effect three "ex clusive rights," i.e., the "exclusive right" to make, the "exclusive right" to use, and the "exclusive right" to sell the patented article. The monopoly created by the federal Constitution and the Revised Statutes is expressly lim ited to a duration of seventeen years, at the expiration of which the patent owner's rights cease and the public is entitled to the free enjoyment of the invention. The proposal for "compulsory li censes" rests upon the assumption that a patent owner, unlike owners of other forms of property, is a kind of trustee for the public, under a sort of moral obligation to see that the public acquires the use of the invention as soon as pos sible. But this assumption has been declared by no less an authority than the United States Supreme Court to be without foundation in logic or in the intention of the American patent sys tem. As the court explained: The inventor is one who has discovered some thing of value. It is his absolute property. He may withhold the knowledge of it from the public, and he may insist upon all the advan tages and benefits which the statute promises to him who discloses to the public his invention.
The public is already better secured as regards patents, than in respect to any other form of property. While property owners may in general lawfully
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suppress the use of their property so long as they desire, and no one for a moment would suggest that such right be cur tailed, the patent owner, at most, can suppress his invention only during the life of his patent; and when the stat utory period of seventeen years is ex pired, the disclosure which he made, in order to obtain his patent, enables the public to enjoy the invention abso lutely, without restriction and without price. Until Congress is prepared to compel owners of unimproved real estate, un occupied houses, idle horses, or unworn clothing, either themselves to improve their real estate, occupy their houses, use their horses, or wear their clothing, or to surrender possession of them to the first applicant, upon such terms and for such rental as some court "deems just," no reason exists why such drastic treatment should be accorded to owners of property in the form of patents. Ill Occasionally the argument for "com pulsory licenses" is advanced in more specious fashion. Witnesses appearing before the House Committee on Patents were asked whether they approved of corporations acquiring a number of similar patents and then manufacturing only under one or two patents and "lock ing up" or "pigeon-holing" in disuse all the rest. Mr. Thomas A. Edison responded to this question with a challenge that neith er the Committee nor anyone appearing before it attempted to take up : I have heard and read numerous statements that many corporations buy valuable inven tions to suppress them, but no one cites specific cases. I myself do not know of a single case. There may be cases where a firm or corpora tion has bought up an invention, introduced it, and afterwards bought up an improvement and ceased using the first patents —• suppressed
