PATENTS, DESIGNS, AND TRADE MARKS (REGISTRATION OF PATENT AGENTS) BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 26 March 1906)

§ LORD COLERIDGE

My Lords, the Act of 1888, which my Bill seeks to amend, was passed in consequence of the Report of a Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Trade, which recommended that a register should be instituted of patent agents, and that the Board of Trade should have the power to erase the names of those who were proved by a committee appointed by them to have been guilty of disgraceful professional conduct. The Act provided that no person should practice as a patent agent, or, rather, that no person should use the words "patent agent," unless he was registered as such; and the result of that was that a number of persons, some of whom had been actually struck off the register for disgraceful professional conduct, continued to practice as before by the mere substitution of titles like "patent expert" and "inventors' agent," and the object of the Act, which was to protect inventors, was largely frustrated. In consequence, a Bill—practically my Bill—was introduced into the House of Commons in 1894, and it there passed its Second Reading and was referred to a Select Committee. The Select Committee passed unanimously the clause which is the substantive clause in my Bill, and then the general election came, and the Bill, like many others, went into limbo and was not heard of again. 809 Last year I introduced the Bill into your Lordships' House, and it was read a second time. It proceeded no further owing to certain objections being taken to it in detail, but those objections I have largely met by adding this year a clause providing that all existing interests shall be preserved, which I think is quite fair and right. I now ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading, as it did last year, and if there are any objections to it they can be dealt with in Committee. The principle of the Bill has been affirmed by both Houses of Parliament, and the measure meets a want largely felt by the profession.