CURIOSITIES OF THE PATENT OFFICE.
THE Patent Journal uncovers a curious abuse in that museum of legal monsters the Court of Chancery. The abuse in question is not very gigantic, but, like the devil lizard of Australia, it is about the ugliest. It is a case in which the machinery and mode of administering a law intended for the public protection and convenience entail on t he public expense, trouble, and aggression. The law requires every patentee to enrol a " specification " or specific description of his patent, in order that the definition of his privilege may be set down, that others may know its limits, and that the nature of the invention may be recorded when the patent shall have expired. A very fair law. But it is adminis- tered in- the strangest way imaginable. There are three offices for enrolment, all nominally in the Court of Chancery, but topographically on different premises—the Enrolment Office, the Rolls Chapel Office, and the Petty Bag Office. This arrange- ment is very efficacious in perplexing any one in search of a par- ticular specification. It also has the advantage of multiplying fees. You must pay a fee of one shilling for finding the year in the record of patents that you want ; and having found the year, you must pay two shillings and sixpence for " looking up " the particular patent : the fees of a shilling a year you must pay at each office, until you discover the lurking specification. To make the confusion and petty exaction more complete, there is no rule for the enrolment of patents at these offices, which are indiffe- rently selected at the option of the agents. The Petty Bag Office seems to be so called from the pettiness of its plans and the avidity of its "bagging" the fees. There are three "clerks," gentlemen at large, who do nothing except pocket the fees, or a portion thereof. One is not in any way connected with the law. All the duties of the office are performed by Mr. F. G. Abbott, the Deputy Clerk. Mr. Abbott has an office in the Rolls Yard rent free : he employs four clerks : he thinks that two clerks could hardly get through the duties of his office in five hours daily ; but he has private business as a solicitor, and he is himself a patent agent ; so that he brings grist to his own mill, and contributes part of the 5001. or 000/. of the fees which he pockets. The existence of this paltry little monster we regard as being fostered by the muddling manner in which our public offices are lodged. To say nothing of enormous waste of money in rents, of time and trouble, caused by the dispersion of public offices,— here is one dispersed into three different places, and we know of another split by a public street,—such squalid abortions as the Petty Bag could only exist in the back yards of Chancery Lane. Have it out, before the light of day, in a decent public building, and it must expire. It is the habit of muddling in murky poking courts, which debases the minds of lawyers and clients, and makes them endure these fantastic oppressions. The labouring poor who inhabit the equally squalid purlieus of Tothill Street and Holborn are equally helpless in their passive submission to typhus or cholera : they think they cannot contend against the oppression, because they do not try.
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