The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century

T HE patent system has lately been subjected to investigations by committees of Congress, and reforms have been proposed to meet some of the most serious criticisms. In recent publications commenting on these discussions it has been suggested that opposition to the patent system is a new development. A writer of a "history of the patent monopoly" asserted that "there never has been, until the present time, any criticism of this type of exclusive privilege,"1 and he attributed the allegedly new attitude to "modern witch-hunters," hungry aspirants to public office," and, by innuendo, to enemies of all private property.2 In actual fact, the controversy about the patent of invention is very old, and the chief opponents of the system have been among the chief proponents of free enterprise. Measured by number of publications and by its political repercussions chiefly in England, France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland the controversy was at its height between i850 and i875. The opposition demanded not merely reform but abolition of the patent system. And for a few years it looked as if the abolitionist movement was going to be victorious.3 The patent controversy, as most seesaw battles, attracted at the time the widest public interest; frequent reports appeared in the daily press and in weekly magazines. That the whole story was later forgotten and now seems to be unknown even to experts in this field is probably due to