Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [154]
that in 1829 led to the formation of the first select committee to examine the regime. Although it led to no firm proposals, the committee did manage to record widespread disapprobation of the prevailing practice. Calling witnesses from engineering- especiallyMarc Isambard Brunel- as well as the patent agents, it heard about awide range ofproblems. The existing regime found almost no support outside the ranks of those most closely invested in it. Brunel for one remarked that "patents are like lottery offices, where people run with great expectations, and enter any thing almost." Opinions on how radically to reform it, however, differed widely. Some witnesses urged a reduction in the cost of obtaining a patent, for example. But it is important to note that most, including Brunel, resisted this.They feared that it would foster too many patents on "trivial" or "frivolous" devices, which would then have a stifling effect on industrial progress. Some proposed having a panel of examiners vet candidate inventions, perhaps doing away with the requirement for a specification altogether. Others merely thought that a longer time should be allowed to file the documents. Some proposed that the specification should be kept secret; most thought that it should be open, but not actually printed and published. For his part, Brunel remarked that it would be impossible both to make a specification sufficiently public to avoid others unwittingly "pirating the invention" and at the same time sufficiently private to prevent infringement by real pirates. He also wanted specially selected juries to try challenges to patents, proposing the Royal Society as arbiter, because with a regular jury one "might as well toss for the fate of a patent." The idea of apanel, of course, immediately gave rise to questions about how to populate such a body. Who could be trusted to act impartially? Whom, more to the point, would the public trust?18 So intractable were all these problems that in the end the committee petered out in the face of them without producing any recommendations at all. And successive committees and commissions throughout the century would find themselves hearing similar opinions repeatedly. Broad consensus clearly existed on the need for some kind of reform, but none at all on what kind. When Brewster's attempts to mobilize the scientific community failed, the whole issue languished.
In the end what compelled action was the Great Exhibition in 1851. The Exhibition was meant to display British and colonial inventive prowess. But manufacturers had a long-standing record of skepticism about even smaller-scale events of this kind, suspecting that their secrets would be revealed to competitors. Now they feared that the absence of effective protection would permit British contributions to fall prey to foreigners, who, as the ultra-Tory MP Charles Sibthorp told the Commons, would "come and pirate the inventions of our countrymen."19 After much agonizing, at the thirteenth hour Parliament did pass a temporary law to extend special protection to exhibits at the Exhibition; it came into effect a few days after the Crystal Palace itself had opened.20 The experience made it clear that something more permanent and considered was sorely needed. The Society of Arts, the Exhibition's original champion, now called for a new system, and the BAAS finally stepped forward to make the case too under the presidency of Brewster himself; he told the Association's Edinburgh meeting that the patents system currently did nothing to help inventors against "remorseless pirates." As a result, in a two-year period no less than three parliamentary select committees investigated the law of patents. They found, to almost nobody's great surprise, that it was radically dysfunctional. For example, one chief clerk had not performed any of his duties for almost fifty years since being appointed in 1801.21 The committees recommended sweeping reform, including the lowering of fees and the establishment of a "scientific" board of examiners. Two failed bills followed in 1851, one of