CO885-(1-2) — Page 455

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WEST INDIES.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference -

TTC.O.885

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

JAMAICA.

JAMAICA.

Governor Sir Charles Grey.-I beg to state that

Governor, No. 94, Sept. 10, 1853. upon my application a Committee of the Council was appointed to take the subject into consideration, Mr. Attorney-General in the chair, but that I have not been able to obtain any report.

The Local Legislature, however, has passed an Act which, if not disallowed by Order of Her Majesty in Council, will prevent any Patent from being in force here unless sanctioned by Island enactment, and

upon the whole I think it desirable that the law should be so; for it is not likely that there ever will be much difficulty or expense in obtaining an Act where an inventor deserves support, and, on the other hand, unless there should be this check, persons amongst the poorer classes here might be ruined by incurring a few of the penalties by which the invasion of English Patents has sometimes heen prohibited. As an instance of what might happen, I have been told, on credible authority, that the use of plantain juice in clarifying sugar is in this way prohibited; and although it could be shown that small cultivators here have used it for very many years, it would be ruin to any one of them to have the question raised against him and to be brought into a Court of Law.

My own impression, therefore, is that it will be best to leave the Island Aet which was passed in the last session, to its operation, requiring only, that every Act by which a new Patent is granted or K