THE PATENT LAWS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In his article No. VII. on "How to Make British Farming Pay" the author refers to an amendment of Patent Laws as " Protection." That was questioned by me soon after the passing of the Act, in a letter which you inserted, when I pointed out that to prevent a foreigner from withholding from this country all benefit from his patent was not " protection but a measure in favour of freedom
[All patents and copyright are in restraint of the freedom of trade. This free trade country makes a compromise, in order to secure to inventors or authors the reward they deserve, by allowing a form of Protection over such periods as may produce encouragement, quite arbitrarily limited to fourteen years, twenty-eight years, lives of children, &c., on no protective principle.—En. Spectator.]
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