PATENTS, DESIGNS, AND TRADEMARKS (REGISTRATION OF PATENT AGENTS) BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 10 April 1905)

§ LORD COLERIDGE

My Lords, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, perhaps it would be useful if I make a short statement with regard to its object. It is an amendment and extension of the Act of 1888. The Act of 1888 was the result of a Commission appointed by the Board of Trade in 1885 to consider the question of the position of patent agents. They recommended that a register should be instituted, and that persons should not be allowed to advertise themselves or to put themselves forward as acting as patent agents unless they were placed on a register in accordance 970 with rules to be drawn up by the Board of Trade. Those rules were drawn up in 1889, and they are the rules which are in force at the present time. Since then grave mischief has been occasioned by the fact that persons have been in the habit of advertising themselves under various headings which are misleading, and have thereby induced innocent and unwary inventors to believe that they are registered as patent agents. The Board of Trade had their attention called to the mischief, and the result was that in the year 1894 a Bill was brought in to remedy this defect. That Bill contained a clause in all substantial matters identical with the substantive clause in my Bill. That Bill was referred to a Committee and the Committee passed the clause which I am now desirous of placing on the Statute-book, but owing to the general election in 1894 the matter went no further and was abandoned. I desire in this Bill to throw my net wider, if I can, and to embrace those persons who, under synonyms of patent agents, practise in this country without being registered, and without being qualified. Again and again the Board of Trade have held inquiries into the conduct of persons who have been on the register. Those inquiries have resulted in the Board of Trade striking them off the register for disgraceful professional conduct; but, notwithstanding, these very persons have continued to practise, to all intents and purposes, as patent agents deceiving unwary inventors by the use of one or other of the appellations I desire to prevent them using in the future under this Bill. I am told that there are some persons who are innocently using these appellations in the ordinary way of their trade, and they think it is unfair that they should be prevented from doing so in future. I am willing in Committee to add a clause, which I have drafted and shown to the President of the Board of Trade, saving all present rights, and in that way following the precedent which was set in the year 1888, when all existing rights or vested interests were at that time saved. That, I think, would prevent objections which have been entertained in some quarters to the Bill; and I hope that the Bill, with that Amendment 971 which I am prepared to move in Committee, may meet with the sanction and approval of the Board of Trade. I may say that the great mass of patents that are registered in this country are registered by properly registered patent agents. I do not wish to prevent any individual acting as agent for another, but I do wish to prevent them holding themselves out as patent agents under synonyms such as patent expert, inventor's agent, and so on, which really mean to the public the same thing as a patent agent. I beg to move the Second Reading of the Bill.