ACS urges LBJ to alter draft deferment policy
Sen.
John McClellan (D.-Ark.) To break the stalemate
of invention, no applicant can go back further than one year prior to the filing date of his application for proof of priority of invention. In addition, the applicant must show that during this period "he commenced a continuing chain of activity leading, without substantial interruption, to a public disclosure thereof or to the filing of a patent application disclosing it." The net effect is to give an inventor one year in which to perfect his invention. ACS, in its compromise version offered earlier, counted on a two-year period. When ACS made the proposal, it foresaw a one-year period for priority of invention plus a one-year period (in the Administration's original proposal) between the filing of a preliminary patent application and the final application. Thus, an inventor would actually have two years to work out his invention. Dr. Robert W. Cairns, President of ACS, put it this way at earlier hearings before Sen. McClellan's patent subcommittee, "One year is inadequate for completion of even a relatively simple chemical invention; a minimum of two years, absent preliminary applications, is, we believe, necessary to achieve the goal of complete and useful technical disclosure in patents." The McClellan compromise also seems unlikely to appeal to such groups as the American Bar Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the American Patent Law Association. These organizations have backed S. 2597. This bill would give a patent to the first to file but in the event of a priority claim, litigants could go as far into the past as may be necessary to prove priority of invention. 16 C&EN MAY 6, 1968
American Chemical Society President Robert W. Cairns' eloquent plea to President Johnson urging the chief executive to revise the new draft rules governing student and occupational deferments apparently fell on deaf ears. President Johnson's response, as conveyed in a letter from Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Alfred B. Fitt made public last week, was polite but left little doubt that the new rules are likely to stand as written. Dr. Cairns made the Society's views known in an April 12 letter to the President. He urged Mr. Johnson "in the strongest possible terms" to rescind the selective service directive which ends deferments for graduate students other than those in medical and related fields and changes the basis for occupational deferments from national interest to community need. "If this directive is not revised through administrative means available to you," Dr. Cairns warns the President, "the scientific and technical community of the nation is going to suffer an incalculable setback in world leadership for years to come." Dr. Cairns points to the assessment of the impact of the new draft rules by the Scientific Manpower Commission and the Council of Graduate Schools of the U.S., which shows ending graduate students deferment would hit hardest at the male-dominated physical sciences and engineering where, in many instances, losses in male enrollment could approach 70% of the entering classes. The resulting drastic loss of Ph.D.'s during the period 1972 through 1974, he points out, will be a "critically serious loss at a time of unprecedented technological needs in our nation's history as we grapple with a society in ferment. "It is the judgment of the American Chemical Society that the technical superiority which this country enjoys today is a result of educational and research activities," Dr. Cairns told the President. "The Society believes that national policy should rest on the principle that this technical superiority must be maintained in terms of our long-range national interest and security. The opinion held by any group, no matter how high in our nation's councils, that this research and educational process is not essentially for our national security can only be considered unknowing, to say the least." Dr. Cairns reiterates ACS's earlier position on graduate student deferments, namely, that it favors a selective service policy that will "not only permit, but encourage" qualified stu-
ACS President Cairns Incalculable setback dents to obtain advanced education. "We do not plead for special consideration of chemists," he stresses. Dr. Cairns urged the President to give "serious consideration" to amending the rule that the oldest eligible be drafted first, which assures that draftees would be composed largely of college graduates. "From the viewpoint of military needs as well as technical industry and graduate school requirements, the Society feels it would be advisable to develop induction procedures involving an age mix of younger and older men," he says. But the Administration's response is not encouraging. The Fitts letter was largely unresponsive to the issues raised by Dr. Cairns. For example, Mr. Fitts made no attempt to reconcile the apparent discrepancies between the National Security Council's determination that graduate student and occupation deferments are no longer essential for the "maintenance of the national health, safety, or interest" and a recent Labor Department bulletin which states that there is a "drastic need" for trained scientists and technicians in 30 major manpower centers just to "maintain the present level of economic growth."
Allied aims biconstituent fiber at carpet market Allied Chemical is trying a new marketing tack with its biconstituent fiber, originally developed in the early 1960's as a nonflatspotting nylon-based tire cord—now probably a dead market. Last week, the company introduced its nylon-polyester biconstituent fi-
