PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :---
ILTIC.O.885
2PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
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term of years. The provisions of 5 and 6 Wm. IV,
DOMINICA.
cap. 83, and 2 and 3 Vict., cap. 67, may not be Governor, No. 28, August 30, 1853. applied as a remedy, inasmuch as the Report of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council cannot be obtained when relief is applied for.
Letters Patent having been enrolled in the High Court of Chancery, an exemplification thereof under the Great Seal of Chancery, will be received as evidence in the Courts of this Colony; exempli- fications of decrees, &c., of the High Court of Chancery are always received as evidence. The seal of the Commissioners, authorised by 15 and 16 Vict., cap. 83, sec. 2, will render documents, original or copies, sealed therewith, valid as evidence in this Colony.
The authority contained in the 18th section of the said Act, that the warrant may direct that the Letters-Patent to be made applicable to Her Majesty's Colonies and plantations abroad, or such of them as may be mentioned in such warrant, renders the said Act to be in force in this Colony, or such parts of the statute as may be necessary to give effect to
a Patent extending to the Colony. The proviso in the same clause cannot have operation against any grant of Patent, because there is no law in force here to render Letters-Patent invalid, save and except the aforesaid general operation of the 21st James 1, cap. 3. The statute 14 and 15 Vict., cap. 99, is said not to be in force here, although the words "in any Courts of Justice," used in several clauses of the Act, would seem to mean all Courts of Justice; but as the statute in regard to docu- mentary evidence appears principally intended to authorize the reception of instruments from foreign and Colonial Courts, &c., it will not affect the question as to Letters-Patent granted in England.
If a Patent-right granted here or in England be infringed in this Island, the inventor will have his remedy by an action of trespass on the case, in the
Court of Common Pleas here, to recover damages
for the injury sustained; and may also, by a Bill
in equity in the Court of Chancery here, restrain the wrong-doer from the further use of the inven- tion, and compel him to account for the profits already derived from a sale of the article, and the
present means of adducing evidence will be sufficient to sustain the suits in the respective Courts.
BRITISH GUIANA,
Governor, No. 80, May 6, 1853.
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BRITISH GUIANA.
Governor Barkly.—I submitted the first question to the Attorney-General, and took care to afford the Court of Policy an opportunity of making any representation they might think fit on the second.
2. I have now the honour to forward the report of the former, but the elective members of the Court have contented themselves with the verbal reitera. tion of their objections to the extension of Patent rights to this Colony, already communicated to Her Majesty's Government in my despatch of July 17, 1852, No. 125.
3. The Chief Justice not having been in Court when the subject was mooted, I thought it right to avail myself, likewise, of his great experience before coming to any conclusion; and I accordingly sent him a copy of the questions in the circular, and added several of my own, in reference to the impres-
sion prevailing in my mind as to the course that it would be most advisable to pursue in the matter.
4. I beg to transmit these two series of questions, with his answers arranged consecutively, and will
now proceed briefly to state my own views.
5. Admitting the full validity of Patents extended
to this Colony by Order in Council, I do not think it
is expedient that such a practice should be continued, other reasons, because experience has shown among that restrictions may thereby be put upon the use of foreign inventions connected with the manufacture
of our staple exports, which do not affect the use of those inventions in the foreign sugar-growing States. 6. Thus, for example, the centrifugal pans invented
in Belgium were afterwards patented in Great Britain and the Colonies, so that, whilst they can be imported into the neighbouring Colony of Surinam, at prime cost,
from either Belgium or France, they could
not, for a long time, be introduced on this side of the River Corentyne without payment of a royalty
of a shilling a hundred-weight on all sugar manu- factured in them; and though that demand has since,
in most cases, been waived by the patentees, cannot still be obtained except at two or three times the price of Belgian or French machines, which, with all the improvements suggested by the actual expe- rience of the beet sugar factories, are, as stated on