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Getting Patents

Getting Patents image
Parent Issue
Day
27
Month
November
Year
1896
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

If you look back on the bistory of human progress, you will find that none of the great epoch making inventions has ever been patented. The man who lit the first fire - whether Proraetheus or the party f rom whoru he.stole the idea - did not get a patent for it. Neither did the man who made the first wheel, in every sense one of the most revolutionary inventions in the history of man. The same thing may be said of the invention of soap, candles, gun powder, urubrellas and the mariner's compass, or, to come down to our own day, of the steam eugiiie and the clectric telegraph. Patents are raostly concerned with smal] mechanica] rletails and improvements - it may be in the application of steam and electricity - and by rneans of these patents enormous profits have been secnred to second rate iuventors, but the great ideas and discoveries which underlie these details have been given to the worid gratis. There is a general notion that if you did not protect inventions by means of patents inventora would eease to invent and material progress would come to a standstill. But history does not bear this out in the least. Alen with great mechanical gifts do not exercise thern sole.y svith a view to commercial profit any more than astronomers searoh the heavens for new worlds with an eye to regisering patents and floating companies

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News