“It is very possible that you may infringe upon these Patents without knowing it?—Constantly. The inconvenience which the Duke of Somerset has mentioned resulting from Patents applied to shipbuilding is so very great that it is scarcely possible to build a ship, being a combination of wood and iron (and you always have some of each in a ship), without treading upon somebody’s Patent; and I am entirely of opinion that the Patents are drawn up for that especial purpose, without any idea of their being practically applied for the benefit of the public, but only that the patentee may lie in wait for a colourable evasion of his Patent taking place.” Now I present the evidence of General Lefroy, deputed by the War-office:— “The expectations of patentees are very extravagant, generally speaking, and prior to trial it is very difficult to determine at all what is the value of an invention. As an example, a gentleman some time ago made a great improvement in cooking apparatus, and he assessed his own reward at a large portion of the whole saving in fuel which might be effected by the application of this improvement to an enormous extent upon the whole military consumption of the Crown, which would have come to many thousands of pounds. Such an improvement should not be assessed by the value to the Crown, but by what it cost the originator in intellectual labour or previous experiment, and its importance in a large sense.” Let me next cite Mr. Clode, Solicitor to the War-office:— “If he has not the power either of keeping those improvements perfectly secret, or of securing them to himself by Patent, then the War-office authorities are placed in the position of having in all probability to pay private individuals for inventions or improvements actually made by their own officers.” Next Mr. Abel, F.R.S., Head Chemist to the War Department:— “In your experimental inquiries, when you have happened to fall upon any discovery, you have not been much annoyed by claimants saying that they have had precedence of you?—Not at all, and it is to that that I referred in my first answer. We do not meet practically with those embarrassments during experiments, but we may meet with them in applying the details of improvements. For instance, I am at present engaged upon the working out of the application of gun cotton, the whole details of which application were communicated as a great secret to this Government by the Austrian Government.... While every care was taken by this Government to keep them secret, a Patent was taken out in this country for the whole improved process of the manufacture.” Mr. Clode again:—