Excerpt from The Law and Practice Relating to Letters Patent for Inventions: With Appendix, Containing the Patents, Design and Trade Marks Act, 1883 Patent, Trade Marks, Designs and Privy Council Rules When the Act of 1883 was passed, some totally new provisions were adopted, and it was enacted by sect. 5, sub-sect. 2, that in every case the applicant must declare that he is the first and true inventor of an invention. This may have been an oversight, or it may have been intentional. I am rather inclined to think it was designed to abolish imported inventions; because we find only one form of declaration provided in the Act, which will clearly not do for an imported invention. Sect. 46 defines the word invention as meaning any manner of new manufacture within sect. 6 of the Statute of Monopolies. As soon as the Act was passed, a great deal of discussion arose as to whether or not communi cated inventions were abolished by sect. 5. The opinion seemed to prevail that this form of patent could not thenceforth be granted, and that the definition of the word invention did not empower a man in possession of a communicated invention to make a declaration (equiva lent to an affidavit) that he was the true and first inventor. Of course, patent agents, who were vitally interested, strongly objected to the change which was supposed to have been made in the law; and Mr. Chamberlain, I imagine, must have yielded to their representations, forviii preface. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.