JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS As already mentioned, the grounds of opposition were extended by the new Act and in particular the ground of lack of subject-matter was intro- duced into the opposition section, which again has generally been regarded as an improvement, because it enables worthless applications to be dealt with at the opposition stage comparatively cheaply, whereas pre- viously many such applications matured into patents and tended to be an obstruction to later workers, the procedure for having a patent declared invalid on the ground of lack of subject-matter being a High Court proceeding and usually very expensive. Another important provision is that the sections of the Act relating to amendment of the specification after acceptance have been made more liberal, and an inventor who has perhaps inadvertently claimed too much now finds it easier to amend his specification and to preserve the valuable part of his invention. Previously many objec- tions of a somewhat technical nature could be raised against applications for amendment, sometimes with very unfortunate consequences for the inventor. Nevertheless, the public is protected in that the inventor is not allowed to make his claims wider than they were before amendment in other words, any- thing which was not an infringement of the patent before amendment cannot be an infringement of the patent after amendment. The importance of a satisfactory provisional specification has already been mentioned and the importance of this document will be realised once it is understood that the pro- visional specification is in fact the foundation upon which the patentee builds his position. The importance of the provisional specification has been still further increased by virtue of the provisions in the 1949 Act relating to the priority date of a claim. Very briefly, these provide that each claim of the complete specification has either the date of the prov. isional specification or the date of the complete specification, depending upon whether the claim is fairly based on the provisional specification or only on the complete specification. Sometimes it is advisable to file one or more additional provisional specifications between the date of filing of the provisional specification and the date of filing of the complete specification, to disclose further developments, and in such a case one complete specification is filed in respect of the whole of the provisional specifications, and some of the claims may be accorded the priority of one of these additional provisional speci- fications. Some useful provisions were also incorporated in the Act with regard to Patents of Addition, and further- more the Comptroller has been given jurisdiction to adjudicate in disputes between employers and employees concerning the ownership of inven- tions. These provisions make it possible for these unfortunate dis- putes to be decided more cheaply than before, since it is no longer 222

PATENTS AND THE :•i.:necessary to resort to High Court xoceedings. ß The Patents Act, 1040, which :i:.:ame into force on January 1st, 1950, has now been in operation for just over three years, and while the meaning and effect of some of its provisions are still in doubt as they have not received judicial interpre- changes have in general been bene- ficial and of advantage to the trade and industry of this country. PATENTS AND COSMETICS With regard to inventions relating particularly to the cosmetic industry, these chiefly concern compositions, methods for treating the hair, and small devices for carrying out beauti- fying treatments andnovel containers for various cosmetic preparations. It is possible to obtain a valid patent for a novel composition, but in addition to novelty there must also be present an element of subject- matter, and in general this arises because the composition gives un- expected advantages. The difficulty in drafting the claims of a patent for a composition are, however, very considerable, because the tendency is either to make the claims too narrow, in which case a competitor can easily avoid them, or to make the claims too wide, for example, by including something which is old or something which does not give the promised result, or, in fact, Mll not give any useful result at all, in which case the patent •11 be held to be invalid. Further difficulties arise because usually the invention origin- COSMETIC INDUSTRX2 ares by the inventor preparing some particularly useful composition, and it is then very difficult to determine what other substances may be substituted for the various ingredi- ents and also to determine which of the ingredients are essential and also if any particular proportions of in- gredients are essential. Naturally, the larger the number of ingredients the more difficult becomes the problem. At first sight it may appear to be a fairly simple matter to draft a claim which is Wide enough to give adequate protection whilst not being so wide as to be invalid on any of the statutory grounds, but in fact the problem is often extremely difficult because the inventor is usually not in possession of all the facts with regard to the various possibilities and also with regard to what has previously been published. If it is a choice between a somewhat wider or a somewhat narrower claim, I should in general advise the some- what narrower claim in •4ew of its increased chance of being held valid, and take the risk that some potential infringer might escape because the alternative open to him will almost certainly be considerably less advan- tageous than the best embodiment protected by the claims of the patent. At one time the comptroller refused applications for treating human hair whilst still on the human body on the ground that the monopoly claimed was not a manner of new manufacture, which I may mention is still the definition of invention given in the Act. The words "manner of new manufac- 223