The Compulsory Working of Patents permit public property to be insured in mutual insurance companies. No. 34 — Banking Inspection. Makes stock holders of institutions authorized to receive deposits liable to depositors in double the amount of their stock in the event of failure of the institution. Abridges to this extent the single liability provision affecting corporations. Puts private banks under state inspection.
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SCHEDULE No. 41 — Schedule. Provides that these amendments shall go into effect on Jan. 1, 1913, with the exception of the initiative and refer endum, which went into effect Oct. 1, and that they shall prevail over anything inconsistent in the previous constitution.
The Compulsory Working of Patents BY (BED C. BILLMAN, M.P.L. PATENTS have been one of the most important factors in the growth of the United States from a group of poverty-stricken non-manufac turing dependencies to the greatest manufacturing country in the world. In fact, the late Senator O. H. Platt of Connecticut, one of the profoundest minds in the United States Senate for the past thirty years, maintained that the American patent system has been the greatest factor in the material development of the nation. This supremacy may be said to be primarily due to the absence in our patent laws of the two great burdens im posed on patentees under the patent systems of the principal Europian coun tries — First, the compulsory working of patents; second, annual taxes after the second or third year of the grant. Such impositions as these are contrary to the spirit of American institutions. PROPOSED AMENDMENT COMPARED WITH CONSTITUTIONAL CLAUSE
The framers of the Constitution of the United States thought the encourage ment of inventing of sufficient impor tance to provide in the Constitution for the granting of patents.
Section 8 reads: "The Congress shall have power . . . Clause 8, "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The protection of authors and inven tors in the possession of their works and inventions, rests on the common rule that a man is entitled to the re wards of his own labor. Besides, such protection promotes the progress of sci ence and the arts. PATENTS AS PROPERTY
In this country patents are recog nized as property and as such as much entitled to protection under the law as the legal owner and possessor of real estate or other forms of property. If a man in due form enters upon and legally proves a claim to a certain tract or parcel of land, the government will issue a patent deed for the same under which the claimant becomes absolute owner and as such may make such use of it, either directly or indirectly, as he may see fit. He is not compelled to either work it himself, or to lease it to others for the same purpose. Indeed,
