Having brought his process to a successful completion in this country, and obtained patents for it, he went to Europe to secure similar protections in the principal countries of the Old World. "The French laws require that the patentee shall put and keep his invention in public use in France within two years from its date. Goodyear had, at great inconvenience and expense, endeavored to comply with this and with all other requirements of the French laws, and thought he had effectually done so; but the courts of France decided that he had not in every particular complied with the strict requisitions of the law, and that, therefore, his patent in France had become void. In England he was still more unfortunate. Having sent specimens of vulcanized fabrics to Charles Mackintosh & Co., in 1842, and having opened with them a negotiation for the sale of the secret of the invention or discovery, one of the partners of that firm, named Thomas Hancock, availing himself, as he admits, of the hints and opportunities thus presented to him, rediscovered, as he affirms, the process of vulcanization, and described it in a patent for England, which was enrolled on May 21, 1844, _about five weeks after_ the specification and publication of the discovery to the world by Goodyear's patent for vulcanization in France. And the patent of Hancock, held good according to a peculiarity of English law, thus superseded Goodyear's English patent for vulcanization, which bore date a few days later. Goodyear, however, obtained the great council medal of the exhibition of all nations at London, the grand medal of the world's exhibition at Paris, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, presented by Napoleon III." In his own country, Mr. Goodyear was scarcely less unfortunate. His patents were infringed and violated by others, even after the decision of the courts seemed to place his rights beyond question. He was too thoroughly the inventor and too little the man of business to protect himself from the robberies of the wretches who plundered him of the profits of his invention. It is said that his inability to manage sharp transactions made him the victim of many who held nominally fair business relations with him. The United States Commissioner of Patents, in 1858, thus spoke of his losses: "No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates.' The spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenseless rights have, unquestionably, amounted to millions."