Automatic Age

12
November, 19 SO
A u t o m a t ic A g e
Around the automatic world new inventions
and ideas are appearing fast. This injects
refreshing streams of enthusiasm into the
trade, but the other side of the picture shows
that the inventors do not always get what is
coming to them.
There are many serious
questions in this problem.
THE IN D U ST RY ACTIVELY INTERESTED IN
PATENT PROTECTION
A growing industry such as the coin ma­
chine trade has vital interests at stake in
the .protection .that patents offer to new in­
ventions and developments. New inventions
calling for patents are piling fast upon each
other as the trade expands, and general
business conditions dlo not seem to have less­
ened the rate of these developments. One
of the best signs of improvement in the
automatic trade is that new inventions are
still actively coming to the front to arouse
new interest and new enthusiasm. About
once each year A utomatic A ge is in the
habit of giving general information on the
subject of patents that may be of value to
the trade.
Recent information relating to patents
seems to bear the theme that patents do not
fully protect after all, and that industries
will have to face this fact and make the
best of the situation. While criticism is
being made of the sluggishness in the Pat­
ent office, the Patent officials give out in­
formation of a heavily increasing business
and that the work is being expedited grad­
ually in a more systematic matter. It is
reported that more than 3,500 persons ap­
plied for patents in the last week of May,
before the rate was advanced to $25, al­
most doubling the number of average week­
ly receipts of first applications, according
to an oral statement by Commissioner
Thomas E. Robertson, of the Patent Office,
Department of Commerce.
Since the rate of the final fee was ad:-
vanced also from $20 to $25, 3,175 persons
sent their applications accompanied by the
final fees, almost quadrupling the weekly
average of 800 receipts for this .particular
application. When the final fee is received
the Patent Office issues a complete grant
of patent.
“The Patent Office has never known such
a deluge of work,” Commission Robert­
© International A rc a d e M u seu m
son said. “As it takes the Printing Office
about four weeks to issue a patent, the
patents that were ordered to issue last week
will be issued on June 24, and in that issue,
instead of having the usual 800 patents, the
Official Gazette will contain nearly 3,200.”
Comparative figures for the leading in­
dustrial nations of the world indicate that
the United States leads by about 200 per
cent in the number of patents issued', over
its nearest competitor, France.
A lengthy article recently published in
the Saturday Evening Post gives the ideas
of Thomas A. Edison on the thoroughness
of patent protection.
He says rather
frankly in part:
Billion a Year for Workers
“Nearly $10,000,000,000, they tell me, are
invested in modern industries which devel­
oped from ideas embodied in my inventions
and my patents. A billion or so dollars, I
am told, may be the annual .total income to
artisans and workers in fields thus created.
But if I were to tell how the inventor has
fared, candor would! compel me to make an
avowal like this: ‘I have made very little
profit from my inventions.' In my lifetime
I have taken out 1180 patents, up to date.
Counting the expense of experimenting and
fighting for my claims in court, these pat­
ents have cost me more than they have re­
turned me in royalties. I have made money
through the introduction and sale of my
products as a manufacturer, not as an in­
ventor.’
“I would not care to go further into this
aspect of the matter, for many obvious rea­
sons. But what I have just said is the
plain, unvarnished truth. I am not saying
it in the humor of complaint. I am far
enough along now to make money from
manufacturing, but I am speaking for the
young fellows just starting out. We have
a miserable system in the United States
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