Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 5, 1892

Mr. Phelps to Mr. Wharton.

Legation of the United States,
Berlin, June 30, 1892. (Received July 22.)

No. 460]

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt to-day of your instruction No. 435, of the 15th instant, and to inclose herewith a copy of the communication which, in obedience to this instruction, I have addressed to the foreign office, relative to the publication in the Imperial Gazette necessary to give protection to American inventors, as required by the German patent law of October 1, 1891.

I have, etc.,

Wm. Walter Phelps.

[Inclosure in No. 460.]

Mr. Phelps to Baron Marschall.

Legation of the United States,
Berlin, June 30, 1892.

The undersigned envoy, etc., of the United States of America had the honor, under date of 12th of May last, to address a communication to his excellency, Marschall von Bieherstein, Imperial secretary of state for foreign affairs, asking that a notice should he published in the Imperial Gazette that American citizens seeking patents for their inventions in Germany were entitled to receive them.

Under date of the 21st of the same month his excellency informed the undersigned that because negotiations connected generally with this subject and intended to fully regulate the mutual protection of patents were pending at Washington, his excellency preferred to abstain for the present from a separate consideration of the question of this notice.

In the meantime the complaints of American inventors reach the State Department to which it is impossible to give a satisfactory answer. These complaints recite the German patent law which went into operation October 1, 1891. They call attention to the fact that under this law an American or any other foreign inventor is entitled to the publication of this notice and to the rights of patent mentioned in it, whenever the United States or that other foreign country has conceded the same rights to German citizens. These complaints truthfully add that the United States has given not only the same rights, but larger ones, viz, the right to apply for a patent within two years, and speak with some bitterness of the fact that these rights are not only given by the United States Government, but are now being used by German subjects in the United States.

In view of these facts, so well stated in the complaints, the undersigned is requested to ask why a privilege granted by German law to American citizens upon a condition precedent which has been so fully complied with should be withheld and made conditional upon the results of other negotiations which are not mentioned in the German law, and which have no actual connection with this matter of fact or practice. And he is also requested again to urge upon the Imperial Government that fair reciprocity would seem to require the immediate publication of the notice spoken of.

The undersigned avails, etc.,

Wm. Walter Phelps.