CLAUSE 4.—(Provision as to unfair exercise of process patent.) (Hansard, 24 June 1932)

I beg to move, in page 4, line 33, to leave out the words "after sub-section (3)."

This Amendment and the Amendments which follow it are designed to give effect to an undertaking given in Committee in respect of a Clause moved by the hon. Member for Wirral (Dr. Clayton). The Government accepted his Amendment with the reservation that if it were found necessary the wording should be altered. I will explain the point. Under Section 27 of the principal Measure there are various grounds set out for dealing with the abuse of monopoly rights. Under that Section ample protection is given if in granting a licence for a patent any unfair conditions are imposed, but experience has shown that it is in fact evaded in practice. The patentee, it has been found in certain cases when granting a licence, undertakes, not as a matter of contract, that no infringement action shall be brought if the person who is going to employ his process takes the whole of his supplies, for something which is not covered by the patent, from the patentee. It is an unfair evasion of the law, and this Clause is designed to defeat it.

The Clause which the hon. Member for Wirrall moved, we find, is not quite as completely watertight as was thought at the time, and this series of Amendments 1436 is designed to include this practice in the Clause dealing with the abuse of monopoly rights, and, in that part of the Clause which enables the Comptroller to grant licences compulsorily, to enable him to do so where such a breach is brought to his notice. In this way we shall keep the Amendment which is proposed in conformity with the Hague Convention, and it will, I think, achieve quite effectively all the objects which the hon. Member for Wirrall desired.