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Show PATENTS BEING UlLl! tP 11 If to WASHINGTON, Oct. 30. War has caused an anomalous situation in the patent office, where the number of applications for patents on war devices incroases daily, and tho fear of giving valuable information to the enemv is causing the withholding of patent rights to scores of inventions. Patents Commissioner Newton announced an-nounced today that the bureau within the last few weeks has refused patents to about sixty war inventions, acting under tne recent lav giving the federal trade commission nnd the patent office authority to prevent publication pub-lication of patenta which the enemy might use. A corps of West Point and Annapolis graduates, trained in the technical problems of war, scan tho thousand or more patent papers issued weekly for details of military significance and choose those on which patent proceedings proceed-ings should bo suspended during the war. Inventors thus deprived of patent rights may offer their devices! to the government and sue after tho war for compensation. Nearly two hundred applications for patenls from German citizens also are pending. Commissioner Newton is postponing action until ho can learn whether Germany is granting reciprocal recipro-cal rights under an act extending for nine months, the time in which foreign for-eign applicants for patents must apply in the United Slates, normally one year from the issuance of a patent in tho foreign country. The state department has been asked to ascertain through the Spanish embassy at Berlin, which has charge of American interests, if similar courtesy cour-tesy is shown American Inventors In Germany. Commissioner Newton explained that tho American government has adopted a liberal policy in protecting the patent rights of ejieray inventors during the war. "Tho president has not ordered any sequestration of foreign hostile patent property," ho said. "The 'trading with the enemy' act only authorizes the president through the federal trade commission to grant licenses to manufacture manu-facture articles , covered by enemy-owned enemy-owned patents. This act provides for licensing American manufacturers under enemy patents and provides that tho money received for the licenses be kept by the government and subsequently subse-quently paid to the German owner of tho patent. "The practical effect of the act, therefore, is to provido for the working work-ing of Gorman patented Inventions in this country and the supervision of tho federal trade. commission and for the protection of the German patentees during tho continuation of the war." |