487

A.—s

Mr. DEAKIN: Yes. Sir WILFRID LAURIER : Will you read your resolution? Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : " That greater uniformity of patent laws throughout the Empire is desirable so far as local circumstances permit." Sir WILFRID LAURIER : With this qualification I have no objection. The subject is very complicated, and perhaps in no place more than Canada, where the patent laws are perhaps more developed than anywhere else. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : You have compulsory working. Sir WILFRID LAURIER : I do not profess to understand it myself. Sir JOSEPH WARD : In New Zealand we are submitting fresh legislation to the next Session of Parliament on this very important matter, and what we want to reserve the right to our people to do is, that while you may be suggesting uniformity of legislation, we will put legislation through on this basis. I think our Parliament will do it, and it will be supported by the Government. We absolutely object to the system that has up to now prevailed of an American, French or German patentee asking for the registration of his patent in our country, reserving to himself the right to manufacture the article in America and keep our people in the position for the full limit of years, and a renewal at the end of the time, of paying the piper for the convenience of the people in America or Germany or France, or wherever else you like to name, and the product itself is never manufactured in our country at all. We pay for a typewriter, for a motor-car, or for something connected with a plough, an exorbitant price to enable a person who has sold his patent to somebody else at an exorbitant price, to bleed our people to death. We are not going to allow it. Mr. DEAKIN : We have a provision aimed at that. . Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : I have a provision with the same object in a Bill I am promoting now. Sir JOSEPH WARD : We want to insist on the registration of a patent within a reasonable time, and unless it is brought into practical working in our country, and the man himself may erect a factory in our country and do so, our people will do it for him. If that is provided for in your Bill it will be endorsed by the people in our country. Sir WILLIAM ROBSON : To obtain uniformity of law would involve extraordinary difficulty. Take Canada, Canada has a search for novelty, and so has the United States, and the United States lays great stress on the value of that provision, but that provision does not exist everywhere, and Canadians might very well object that patents granted with less severity of investigation should nevertheless run current throughout Canada, as if they were granted to Canadians. Each Colony will want to think a great deal about this subject.

Thirteenth Day. 8 May 1907.

Uniformity of Patent Laws.