rapidly, I do not know. I am not being critical of you at all, but every department or agency coming before us always tells us the same thing. They say we do not have enough employees, but still we are reporting more money for every department than ever before. I appreciate your position, but speaking for myself I do not see how we u say we will freeze them without some procedure somewhere along the line to protect enterprise.

Dr. HAYES, I think, sir, the bill makes that provision, because the owner of the application has the right to appeal from the secrecy order anyhow. If he thinks that his application is under a secrecy order unnecessarily he has the right of appeal from that order, so that it seems to me it would be better all-around if we left the duty of calling up these applications on the owners of the applications rather than imposing upon the defense departments the duty of examining each and every one of those each year.

Mr. WILLIS. There, again, you are going to force upon the inventors the necessity of hiring lawyers and of preparing appeals of cases. Would the answer be to enlarge the period and to make it longer than 1 year?

Dr. HAYES, That could be; if it were 2 years that would help a great deal.

Mr. WILLAS. I would like to work out a situation to give that protection to industry and at the same time not to have to hire more employees. If you can provide an answer to that I would be happy.

Mr. BRYSON. And assuming that Congress could justify authorizing additional employees I imagine that you would have difficulty in finding the type of employees you need.

Dr. HAYES, Wedo; they are in very short supply.

Mr. Bryson. They are scarce.

Dr. HAYES, Yes.

Mr. BRYSON. They are expensive too. They are very substantially paid, and they are entitled to it.

Dr. HAYES. They are, yes, sir. I think, however, that leaving it to the owner of the application need not be any burden.

The appeal procedure could be very simple. As I see it he could simply write a letter to the Commissioner of Patents. If he did not know what agency had put his application under the secrecy order he could simply write to the Commissioner of Patents and say I think my application so and so is being unduly held under a secrecy order, I think there is no need for it to remain under a secrecy order now because we have captured that kind of material from somebody we are engaged in hostilities against.

Mr. WILLIS. Of course, there is the right of appeal irrespective of what the year provision is, is there not ?

Dr. HAYes, Yes, sir; that is right. So that, it seeros to me that it would save a great deal of work for the defense departments if the owners of the applications called them up for review if they thought they were being unduly held.

Mr. Wis. Now, in sealing those applications originally, investigations must be made.

Dr. HAYES, They are made. The application is examined by a technical man who knows the field. For example, if it is a radar transmitter, an expert on radar transmitters Notice the apda

tion in the first place before a secrecy order is issued, and he says this is an important invention in radar transmitters; it is something that we have not had before, or it is something that we have and do not want to disclose.

Mr. Wuas. Of course, it is not very likely that having found the necessity for sealing it the year before that the agency would recant or retract and take a different position, is there? Not in very many cases would that happen?

Dr. Hayes. Well, that would depend on the rapidity with which the art developed and the way fortimes went on the battlefield. For example, we held the Norden bombsight secret. until Norden bombsights were captured in planes that were shot down. From then on there was no point in it, but we could not foresee when that time would be, when the bombsight would be captured and disclosed to the enemy. Mr. Wis. That is your only criticism of the bill?

Dr. HAYES. That was the only point that I had any particular feeling on should be changed, but it is something that I would recommend should be given very careful consideration.

Mr. BRYSON. Do I understand, Doctor, that you are appearing in lieu of Captain Robillard?

Dr. HAYES. Yes, sir.

Mr. WiLLis. You are speaking for the Navy, Doctor?

Dr. Hayes. I am, yes, sir.

Mr. Wnus. Is there anybody speaking for the Defense Depart

ment?

Mr. HARRIS. Yes, they have representativo here.

Mr. BRYSON. You are speaking for all three of the services, Doctor? Dr. HAYES. Yes, sir, the bill was assigned to the Navy Department, to the sponsorship of the Navy Department.

Mr. WILLS. That is very important to us. You are speaking for all branches of the service?

Dr. HAYES. Yes, sir.

Mr. HARRIS, Mr. Willis, we have gentlemen from the Air Corps here, and we have gentlemen from the Munitions Board here. În other words, we have representatives of the Department of Defense present.

Mr. Was. And you have somebody from the Patent Law Association or private industry?

Mr. HARRIS. Yes, we do have.

Mr. WiLLas. How about the Department of Justice?

Mr. Harris, Yes, sir, we have, sir.

Mr. Buysox. Is that all you wish to say now, Doctor?

Dr. HAYES, Yes, sir.

Mr. BRYSOS. Well, we are pleased to have had you here with us and to get your views.

Mr. Hans. We also have Colonel Hodges of the Army here.

STATEMENT OF PAUL A. ROSE, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON LAWS AND RULES. REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN PATENT LAW ASSOCIATION

Mr Buyoos, Now, the next witness on the That is Mr. Paul Rose of cake won ha en loud the trivilege

Mr. Rose. Yes, sir.

PATENT DISCLOSURE

Mr. BRYSON. Do you have a prepared statement, Mr. Rose?

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Mr. Rose. Yes, sir; I have filed 25 copies with the committee counsel.

Mr. BRYSON. Do you wish to read your statement, Mr. Rose?
Mr. Rose. In part, sir, if you do not mind.

My name is Paul A. Rose. I appear here as chairman of the laws and rules committee of the American Patent Law Association, by authority of the board of managers of the association to present the views of the American Patent Law Association with respect to H.R. 4687.

Mr. Willis, Let me expose my ignorance. How big a coverage of the patent lawyers of the United States has the American Patent Law Association? In other words, is it restricted to a few cities in the East and North, or is it spread out throughout the United States?

Mr. Rose. No, sir; we have members throughout the country to the number of bet ween 1,300 and 1,400.

Mr. BRYSON. Are you about the largest association numerically of the patent law associations?

Mr. Rose. Yes, sir. We are the largest patent law association in the country, and the only national group. There are 19 other patent law associations in the various States and cities where there are concentrations of patent lawyers, and a great many of the members of what we term the local associations are also members of the American Patent Law Association.

Mr. Waas. Is every State represented in your association?
Mr. Rose. Just about every State in the Union; yes, sir.

Mr. BRYSON. You will understand that we, who are just ordinary cornfield lawyers, are confused about the menibers of the associations. All we know are the State bar associations and the American Bar Association.

Mr. Rose. To go into that a little further, sir, the American Patent Law Association in the patent field may be said to be similar to the American Bar Association and the various local groups of which some are State bar associations, although there is not as close affiliation of the local associations with the national group as there is in the American Bar Association. The local groups are autonomous, but we do collaborate, as you know, with their effort as we did in connection with the codification bill.

Mr. BRYSON. That is right.

Mr. Rose. And we organized their coordinating committee on which all of the patent law associations participated in the drafting of the suggestions for amendment of the bill, and we appeared more or less as a group in support of it, but in this case here Tam appearing only for the American Patent Law Association and not for any of the local groups.

MP. WILLIS, If I remember well there was a statement filed in op position by the Chicago group last year or the year before.

Mr. Rose. To this bill?

Mr. Was. That is my recollection, although that has been 2 years ngo, or shall I say, if I remember well, they were opposed to the bill in certain respects.

Mr. Rourns, That dealt with the uniform restent low !

Mr. Willis, No, on this particular bill that we had here in 1949. Mr. Brysox. All right, you may proceed, Mr. Rose.

Mr. Rose. This bill has as its purpose to enact permanent legislation, applicable at all times, providing for the withholding of patents and maintenance of seervey of inventions which are important to the national defense and for the payment of compensation to the owners of such inventions for damage resulting from orders of secrecy issued under the law or for use of the inventions by the Government.

The bill in general continues in effect the principles of the acts of October 6, 1917, and July 1, 1910, which are effective only during the time that the United States is at war, and, as Dr. Hayes has said, the urgency of the bill at the present time is the imminence of the declaration by the Congress of the end of the war with Germany and the signing of the Japanese peace treaty which, as I understand it, would leave the present acts ineffective.

Mr. Winas. Let me ask you this question, and if you cannot answer it I hope somebody in the audience will give us the information desired. Suppose peace were declared with respect to the war with Germany and Japan, so that the war would be over with respect to Public Law 700!

Mr. Brysox. That is, World War 11.

Mr. Witats. Yes, World War II. I assume then that there are certain patents which probably are still sealed and which would then be publicly disclosed. If so, how many of them are there? Can anybody enlighten us on that? We have been saying if peace comes something dangerous is going to happen, but no one has said what is going to happen. I assume that certain patents which are under seal will be exposed to public information ; is not that true?

Mr. BRYSON. Would not Mr. Federico know?

Mr. Rose. Mr. Federico, I think, could possibly give the committee pretty accurate information as to the number of applications under Secrecy, but as to whether they have become public information ho

would not know.

Mr. HARRIS. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, Colonel Hodges has a few figures on that.

Mr. Brysox. Yes.

Mr. Rost. In view of the importance of technological developments in modern warfare and the necessity of maintaining a superior military position at all times under conditions as they exist in the world today, it must be recognized that legislation of this character is necessary, regardless of the technical existence or nonexistence of a state of war, Accordingly the American Patent Law Association interposes no objection to the bill in principle.

It is, of course, rather drastic legislation in normal times of peace to place an invention under secrecy which not only withholds the granting of a patent, but also prevents the owner of the invention from emploiting it under what we like to think of here as our free enterprise system. Therefore, it is rather drastic, but we think that these are not normal pencetimes even if we have a technical state of peace. Therefore, we would not oppose the bill which possibly we would ordinarily in ordinary times.

Section 1 of the bill provides that the Secretary of Commerce may make available for inspection by specified defense agencies and the

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of determining whether a secrecy order shall be recommended and provides also that each individual in such agencies to whom the application is disclosed shall sign a dated acknowledgement thereof which shall become a part of the record.

Mr. RAMSEY. Let mo ask you one question. You said something that rather interests me. You say it is a hardship on a man who has a patent to give up his privilege to exploit it during times of danger to his country, but he does not need to take a patent does he? Ile can ლი ahead and make it if he wants to and not get any patent, and thrown it open to the public and let everybody make it. He wants protection, but he does not want to protect his country.

Mr. Rose. I did not say that, sir. I said in times of peace that wo would ordinarily oppose secrecy orders which would prevent the exploitation of the invention. In time of war no one wants to disclose to the public and, therefore, to the enemy, possibly, inventions which would be of value to the national defense.

Mr. RAMSEY. That is the reason the hardship is on him. A hardship is on all of us during war.

Mr. Rose. Yes, but this bill is applicable in peacetime as well as war time.

Mr. RAMSEY. What you are trying to do is get it removed when peacetime comes?

Mr. Rose. No, sir; wo are not, we are approving the bill.
Mr. BRYSON. In principle.

Mr. Rose. In principle.

Mr. RAMSAY. All right; just so I understand.

Mr. Rose. Wo believe that the provisions for the signing of a receipt or acknowledgement by persons other than the persons in the Patent Oflice, who have access to the application, is a rather important feature of the bill because particularly in times of emergency the Government brings from all phases of industry experts into the Government, and the man who examines an application may be an engineer who in civilian life would be working for a certain company. He has access to the application of others and in order to remove any controversy or possibility or controversy later about the fact that he may have used that information, if a receipt is signed and in the file then the owners of the application will know who has seen it.

Mr. Was. That is to prevent an examiner from claiming priority on the patent as against the applicant, is it not?

Mr. Rose. Well, not the examiner in the Patent Office, but the engineer in the Defense agencies who sees the application who may be brought into the Government from industry for a limited period of time, and it is well known he has seen it in the event of later controversy.

Mr. Waas. Well, the very purpose of that is to establish who invented or designed the patent originally; if that is not the purpose, what is the purpose?

Mr. Rose. The filing of the application establishes for the inventor his date, as far as the date of filing is concerned so that anyone thereafter seeing it, if he saw the designs and tried to assert a prior claim would be later in point of time, so that there would be no real controversy as to the invention.