§ MR. J. D. WHITE (Dumbartonshire)I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the statement made on page 8 of the Annual Report of the Patent Office for 1905 that, by consulting the abridgments of British patent specifications, an inventor is now enabled to make a complete fireside search for all inventions prior to 1901 which might invalidate his own; and whether he will consider the advisability of qualifying this statement, in view of the fact that such invalidating may result from anticipation in any of the foreign specifications to which the public has access at the Patent Office Library as well as in many other ways which are outside' the scope of the abridgments.
§ THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE,) Carnarvon BoroughsThe inventions dealt, with in the part of the Report in which the passage in question occurs are inventions patented in this country, and I think that any one reading the passage together with its context would understand it to refer solely to inventions protected by British patents. Read in this sense, the passage is correct as it stands.