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31, 1908. In my report I pointed out the importance and necessity for these proposed amendments to the patent laws. The most important deals with the safeguarding of applications from possible mutilation or fraudulent amendment during their pendency in the Patent Office, and with increasing the certainty of examinations of applications. The others comprise merely verbal changes in sections 4917 and 4893 of the Revised Statutes, in the interest of accuracy and clearness.

The first provides for the amendment of section 4889 of the Revised Statutes. Certain changes in phraseology of the statutes are provided by the bill; but the really essential provision is that there shall be required to be filed with an application for patent, in addition to the drawing, two photographic copies of such drawing. This imposes upon every applicant for patent an additional statutory requirement, to wit, to file with each application of which a signed and attested drawing forms part two photographic copies of such signed and attested drawing.

The purposes of this requirement are (1) to guard against and enable the detection of unauthorized changes in the original drawing or abstraction of such drawing and substitution of another; (2) to lessen the danger of serious mistakes on the part of the office in failing to detect interferences between copending applications for the same invention.

It is proposed to accomplish the first purpose by causing to be filed in secret archives, in charge of the chief draftsmen, one of these photographic copies, which may serve as a permanent standard of comparison with the pen-and-ink drawing from which the copies that form a part of the patent are taken. At present the drawing may be sent to the attorney's room upon request of any one appearing of record as having an interest in the application, or it may be changed or abstracted and replaced by any corrupt employee of the Patent Office, leaving no evidence, or at best negative indications, that any unauthorized changes have been made. An illuminative example of what unauthorized changes may be made is found in the case of the Heany patent, No. 872,936, where no drawing was filed originally with the application, but one was filed subsequently, which was later abstracted and replaced by another of entirely different character, the last drawing being the one which now forms a part of the patent. If at the time the Heany application was filed all applicants had been required to file a photographic reproduction of the drawing, the changes could hardly have been made without detection, except by the collusion of two or more persons, and with great difficulty.

It is proposed to accomplish the second purpose by retaining the second photographic copy of the drawing in the file wrapper and sending it with the file to the attorneys' room, upon order, or to any other

division or any tribunal of the Patent Office, when required, leaving the original drawing in the examining division, where the application is classified for examination; or, if for any reason it should become necessary to send the original drawing out of the examining division, the photographic copy could be retained therein, where it would be discovered in interference searches. Under the present procedure, both drawing and file wrapper are sent out of the division on attorneys' orders, also when they are placed in interference or are appealed; and the drawing is frequently sent out on orders of the official draftsman or the chief of the copy and manuscript division for extended periods, amounting in interference proceedings to years. While the drawing is out of the examining division interferences between the application of which it forms a part and other subsequently filed applications may be overlooked, as the interference search is made by means of the drawing. The memory of the examiner can not always be relied upon to recall interfering applications, especially as the personnel of the force changes continually.

The size of the sheets upon which the proposed photographic copies shall be made, their character and disposition, may be left to the discretion of the Commissioner of Patents, who may prescribe, subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, all proper requirements by rule under the authority of section 483 of the Revised Statutes.

It is very clear that it is desirable for applicants filing applications for patent to accompany the same with photographic copies of the drawings. This has been the opinion of my predecessors in office. Commissioner Butterworth issued an order to this effect, but subsequently revoked it because he was convinced that he could not legally enforce that order without statutory authority. The recent developments in the Patent Office in regard to the tampering with patent records make it essential that the statute be amended as requested, so as to give statutory authority to the requirement for the photographic copies. It may be said, however, that this is the first time that the records of the Patent Office have been tampered with during its history, covering a period of 121 years, and it is the only patent so tampered with in more than 1,000,000 patents which have been granted by the United States to date.

The other two bills provide for slight amendments to sections 4893 and 4917, Revised Statutes, to which they apply, respectively. These amendments change only the word "claimant" in section 4893 to read "applicant," and the word "claimant" in section 4917 to read "patentee."

The word "claimant" is not, in my opinion, the proper word to use in these statutes. In all other statutes relating to patents the inventor is formally referred to as an "applicant" or as a "patentee." These

two statutes are the only ones using the word "claimant." These amendments, therefore, will bring these statutes into conformity with the other statutes relating to patents.

The application for a patent is not a claim against the Government, and the attorney in a patent case is not prosecuting a claim against the Government. The patent, on the contrary, is in the nature of a contract and is so construed by the authorities on the subject and by the courts. The inventor having created something new, offers by his application to fully disclose his invention at once and to give it to the public at the end of 17 years, provided the United States will allow him to have the exclusive possession thereof in the meantime. In granting a patent for an invention the Government is not parting with anything possessed by the public prior to applicant's disclosure. If the inventor chooses not to disclose his invention, but to practice it in secret, the public is the loser. In payment for the invention the inventor obtains the right to bring suit in the Federal courts against infringers during a period of 17 years.

I also respectfully recommend the passage of the bill prepared by me and introduced and referred to the Patent Committee of each House of Congress in the Sixty-first Congress, and reintroduced by Mr. Oldfield, chairman of the Patent Committee, requiring that an application for patent shall be prosecuted within six months after any action by the Patent Office. The present period within which the applicant is allowed to amend is one year, and under the existing practice there have been many instances of cases being amended just within the one-year limit, in order to keep them alive, they thus serving as dragnets in many cases to catch inventions along similar lines which may be subsequently applied for, thereby involving inventors in expensive interference proceedings. It has been the effort of the office to get the old cases out of the office whenever possible consistent with good work. The office has been severely criticized recently, especially in the last year or two, for allowing applications, particularly those owned by corporations, to rest in the office for such long periods as to really have the effect of extending the patent period in case such applications are later passed to issue. Instructions have been repeatedly given to the examining corps to, as far as possible, get rid of all such cases as are delayed apparently by the applicant or his attorney. Had this bill passed it would have almost entirely overcome that criticism.

Full hearings were given on all these bills by the Patent Committees of the Sixtieth and Sixty-first Congresses and these bills were prepared by the office and their passage strongly urged for fully three years by the present administration of the office. The bill for shortening the period during which amendments may be filed and the bill eliminating the appeal within the Patent Office

were strongly opposed before the Patent Committee by certain members of the patent bar of Washington and a few attorneys not members of that association. Despite this opposition, however, the bills were favorably reported by the committees, but were not reached on the calendar. These bills have since been reintroduced by the chairman of the House Committee on Patents, Representative Oldfield, of Arkansas, who was a minority member of the former Patent Committee, and it is hoped that these measures will all be enacted into laws at the coming session of Congress. I trust you will see your way clear to lend your favorable support to this desired result. These bills, which are now pending in the Committee on Patents of the House, are H. R. 7609, providing for the elimination of one of the appeals within the Patent Office; H. R. 7711, requiring the filing of photographic copies of drawings accompanying applications for patents; H. R. 7710, authorizing the commissioner to issue certificates of correction; and H. R. 8388, requiring that applications shall be completed and prepared for examination within six months after the filing of the application.

In connection with the bill for the elimination of one of the appeals within the office, and to illustrate the heavy appeal docket, the following table is furnished:

Appeals, fiscal year 1911.

Number of interferences declared during the year.
Decisions of the examiner of interferences on priority in interference cases.... 298
Appeals to examiners in chief in interference cases.
Ex parte appeals to examiners in chief.....

1,537

171

931

1, 102

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THE CASE OF EVERDING, BARTON, AND HEANY.

In the fall of 1907 my suspicions were aroused as to probable irregularities in Patent No. 872936, and also as to several applications for patent pending in the name of John Allen Heany, of York, Pa., for improvements in tungsten lamps.

I personally conducted for some three weeks the investigation as to these matters. I appointed a board consisting of Examiner-inChief Frank C. Skinner, Examiner-in-Chief Levin H. Campbell, and Examiner of Classification Eugene D. Sewall, the sessions being held and all the witnesses examined in my private office.

These inquiries resulted in placing the evidence in the hands of the United States district attorney for the District of Columbia, and the same were by him presented to the grand jury, who, at the January term, 1908, returned indictments against Henry E. Everding, a patent attorney of Philadelphia, Ned W. Barton, an assistant examiner in the Patent Office, and John Allen Heany, inventor, of York, Pa., for forgery and violation of sections 5403 and 5440 of the Revised Statutes, based upon the destruction of certain papers forming parts of original applications for patents filed in the Patent Office by said Heany and the substitution therefor of forged and fraudulent papers. The case came on for trial in the fall of 1908. Barton pleaded guilty and was immediately sentenced to the penitentiary. Everding and Heany stood trial, with the result that in a verdict rendered by the jury December 24, 1908, Everding was convicted and Heany acquitted. Both Everding and Barton served their terms in the penitentiary. The Government was represented at the trial of the criminal case by United States Attorney D. W. Baker, assisted by Jesse C. Adkins and then Principal Examiner F. C. Skinner, the latter two being appointed by the Attorney General at my request to represent the Patent Office.

After the termination of the criminal trial, I then issued an order against John Allen Heany, the alleged inventor, to show cause why certain interferences in which his applications were involved should not be dissolved and his applications included therein and also certain other applications also tainted with fraud should not be stricken from the files and treated as a nullity.

At that time being under appointment by the President as expert attaché to the United States delegation to the Fourth International Conference of American States at Buenos Aires, 1910, and also subsequently and during the period of these later hearings occupying the position, by appointment of the President, as chairman of the American delegation to the conference of Washington of the International Union for the Protection of Industrial Property, which conference was wholly placed in my charge by the Secretary of State, and as my whole time was occupied with these and other important duties, I assigned the further investigation and the hearings and determination of the questions which would result from my order to Heany to show cause to First Assistant Commissioner Cornelius C. Billings.

This investigation was begun in the summer of 1910 and was carried on for a period of several months, and a great many witnesses were examined. During these hearings the Government was repre

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