“Other instances will be found in the evidence of particular manufactures and branches of invention which are so blocked up by Patents, that not only are inventors deterred from taking them up with a view to improvement, but the manufacturer, in carrying on his regular course of trade, is hampered by owners of worthless Patents, whom it is generally more convenient to buy off than to resist. The evil also results in another practice, having the same obstructive tendency—namely, that of combination amongst a number of persons of the same trade to buy up all the Patents relating to it, and to pay the expense of attacking subsequent improvers out of a common fund. From a comparison of evidence, it cannot be doubted that this practice prevails to a considerable extent. We must also conclude that when the obstruction is not to be got rid of without the expense and annoyance of litigation, in a large majority of cases the manufacturer submits to an exaction, rather than incur the alternative. “We desire to call special attention to the evidence given by the First Lord of the Admiralty, and by various witnesses on behalf of the War Department, showing the embarrassment which has been caused to the naval and military services by the multitude of Patents taken out for inventions in use in those departments. “It has long been the practice, founded on judicial decision, to consider that the use or publication of an invention abroad did not deprive that invention of the character of ‘a new manufacture within this realm.’ It appears to us, and is generally admitted in the evidence, that the present facilities of communication subsisting between all parts of the world have done away with the only valid reason for such a construction of the words of the Statute of Monopolies. The object of allowing such Patents might fairly be, in an age of slow international communication, to encourage enterprising persons to go in search of, and to introduce to this country, useful processes employed abroad, but not otherwise likely to be adopted here, for the want of which we should long have been behind other nations. It does not, however, seem worth while to continue the same facilities now, when foreign inventions are most frequently patented in this country and in their native land simultaneously; especially, as we are well informed, that one result of the practice is to encourage unscrupulous persons to steal the inventions of foreigners and to run a race with the legitimate owner to get them patented here.”