CO885-(1-2) — Page 463

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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Reference :-

LHC.O.

• 885

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO

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unexceptionable authority, vastly superior to the

BRITISH GEJANA.

English (Vide Dr. Shier's Pamphlet, Despatch Governor, No. 80, May 6, 1953. No. 28, February 18.)

7. While, however, I consider that Patents should not affect this Colony unless taken out by the original inventors within its limits, 1 am decidedly of opinion that the present system of petitioning the Court of Policy for an Ordinance in each separate case, is neither convenient, nor fair towards the inventos, whose interests, I need hardly point out, are, in the long run, identical with those of the colonists themselves, no country in the world being so much concerned in the development of scientific discoveries as British Guiana, where skill and economy may be regarded as fairly pitted against brute force in Cuba and Brazil.

8. It is not, of course, to the expense of getting an Ordinance passed that I allude, for, unlike an Act of Parliament, it costs literally nothing, but to the exposure of the inventor's claims to the risk of caprice or injustice from so small a knot of gentle- men, who, however respectable and intelligent, are themselves engaged in the cultivation and manufac- ture of the very article to which nine in ten of Patents taken out here relate.

9. Only last year, the petition of Don Ramos, of Porto Rico, for protection to improvements in sugar- making, was rejected; that of Mr. Brandeis, of London, has just been granted: and a still stronger instance may be quoted in the case of Dr. Wilton Turner, of this Colony, whose application for a Patent in respect to sugar was rejected at the same time as Don Ramos's, although, in the previous year, an Ordinance was passed protecting his discoveries in the manufacture of rum, thereby encouraging him to devote his time to such researches. In this last case, again, the Patent as to rum was only granted for seven years, whilst, in former instances, fourteen years had been the term,

10. I respectfully submit, therefore, that, before the Crown divests itself of its right to issue Letters- Patent in this Colony, it should call upon the Court of Policy to pass an Ordinance regulating the mode and manner of taking out Patents therein, somewhat upon the principle of the English Patent Act, 15 & 16 Vict., cap. 83, and that Ordiuances conferring special rights should henceforth be disallowed.

BRITISH GUIANA.

Governor, No. 80. May 6, 1858.

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11. One provision not to be found in the English laws on the subject should, in my opinion, be inserted in such an Ordinance-the one, namely, suggested in my fourth and fifth questions to the Chief Justice, as to withholding the right of a patentee to take out an interdict against any party for an alleged infringement until he had first established the fact by an action at law.

12. It seems to me that some such enactment is particularly necessary in this Colony, for whatever the present Chief Justice may state as his own view of the discretion with which the Court or Judge is invested, the granting interdicts on petition bas hitherto been little less than a matter of course; and, as Mr. Arrindell himself admits, the practice of the Courts of England in regard to injunctions is much more summary and expeditious than the prac- tice here as to interdicts, which, once granted, can only be dissolved after regular issues are joined, evidence adduced by the parties, and counsel heard. 13. In short, whilst an interdict can be obtained immediately, many montlig must necessarily elapse before it can be taken off; and as nearly every Patent extended to this Colony is connected, as already remarked, with the manufacture of its great staples, sugar especially, in which enormous capitals are embarked, and most expensive machinery em- ployed, it is evident, on the one hand, that the effect

of a sudden suspension of operations, in obedience to such a form of law, may be ruinous to the proprietor of a plantation; whereas, on the other, the whole process of sugar-making having for years past been one great experiment wherein the novelty consisted rather in the combination than in the introduction of chemical ingredients, nothing is easier than to allege an infringement of the well- known vague specifications of Patents.

14. In elucidation of my first point, I may again refer to the history of the Centrifugal Patent, the validity of which it was at first determined by the planters of this Colony to resist, as a party using Belgian pans in Jamaica had, I believe, successfully done. A kind of association was formed; 'pans manufactured by an engineer residing in the Colony, and set to work on a plantation belonging to one of the sub-cribers; but no sooner was an interdict