Introducing the Examiners

Abstract

Abstract Secret patents got off to a good start in the twentieth century when a question on them was asked in the House of Commons on 22 April 1901. William Redmond, MP for East County Clare, asked the Secretary of State for War to comment on the fact that two academics, who were also consultants to the War Office, had just applied for patents, in their own names, on improvements to detonators and explosives. William Redmond (1861-1917) was the younger brother of John Redmond (1851-1918), the leader of the Irish Nationalists at Westminster. His question on patents was the kind of question his party used, with good effect, continually to harass the government, at the time a radical Tory administration under the leadership of the Marquess of Salisbury and already embarrassed by its inability to bring the war in South Africa to an end. The question implied that some kind of corruption might be taking place, for the lay person, knowing that patents, like books, attract royalties for their authors, and that royalties by their very name must be of some consequence, would assume that great sums of money were involved. The Secretary of State had to give a full answer to the insinuation, and for the first time in Parliament some reasons were given for the policy on secret patents.