The Chemical World This Week
WASH™™
MARCH SO,
i964
CONCENTRATES
• A patent application on two man-made chemical elements has been upheld by the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. The court ruled against the Patent Office, which refused to grant Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg a patent on composition of matter, production, and separation of americium and curium. The Patent Office rejected the application on the ground that these elements are inherently produced in a nuclear reactor, thus their production is already covered by the basic patent on atomic reactors which was issued to the late Dr. Enrico Fermi and others. Court Judge Arthur M. Smith points out that the Fermi patent does not mention the two elements. If they were produced in the Fermi process, Judge Smith says, they were produced in such "miniscule amounts and under such conditions" that their presence was "undetectable." Thus, he ruled that Dr. Seaborg had developed a different and patentable method for making these elements. The Patent Office is expected to accept the Court's ruling and issue the patentrights to which Dr. Seaborg has assigned to the Atomic Energy Commission. • William S. Merrell Co. has pleaded no contest to charges of withholding information and making false statements to the Food and Drug Administration on its anticholesterol drug MER/29, in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. MER/29 (generically Triparanol) was withdrawn from the market in April 1962 because of reported harmful side effects. The Government filed the charges late in 1963 (C&EN, Dec. 30, 1963, page 16). Merrell says that the no contest plea was entered "rather than undertake a lengthy complicated trial which would involve the appraisal of difficult questions of scientific judgment involved in the evaluation of complex animal experimentation. ,, The company adds that the misstatements charged were essentially omissions in its reports to FDA due to "a different view of the law" by the testing scientists who did not feel they should load down reports with test results affecting "less than 1% of the studies." • The chemical industry opposes increased patent fees approved by the House. In a letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks, Gen. George H. Decker (U.S.A. Ret.), president of the Manufacturing
Chemists' Association, supports S. 2547, introduced by Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D.-Conn.) but opposes H.R. 8190, approved by the House. The subcommittee has been holding hearings on these proposals to raise patent fees (C&EN March 9, page 34). MCA supports the principle of raising patent fees to recover a greater share of Patent Office operating costs. S. 2547 would do this by simply increasing the filing and issuing fees without changing the patent fee structure, MCA says. However, the association believes, the system of maintenance fees which would go into effect under H.R. 8190 would lessen the protection of the patent system by tending to decrease the life of patents, would increase the cost burden on individual inventors, and would impose heavy administrative burdens on industry and the Patent Office. • U.S. chemical producers can maintain a high level of safety without detailed federal regulations, according to the Manufacturing Chemists' Association. MCA also believes that present safety and health standards and proposed changes in these standards cannot achieve the safety objectives of the Walsh-Healey Act. These statements were part of the testimony delivered by Carl H. Hageman, a vice president of Union Carbide and MCA's spokesman, to the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Division. However, Mr. Hageman points out, if some type of federal regulations are needed, they should be advisory rather than mandatory. • A proposal to improve NBS administrative procedures won House approval by a narrow margin. H.R. 5838 would amend the Organic Act of the National Bureau of Standards to permit statutory authorizations for appropriations for NBS to remain available for more than one fiscal year; this would permit NBS to carry on longrange programs without getting a new authorization each year. It would also authorize other government agencies to transfer funds to NBS and merge them with bureau funds to support research on projects which can best be performed at the bureau. Opposition centered principally on the proposal to transfer agency funds. Opponents charged that this proposal could be used to bypass the Appropriations Committee and use funds for purposes which were not originally specified. MAR.
30,
1964
C&EN
19
