in regard to a foreign patent, their terms having been determined by § 4887 at the moment they were issued and that therefore their duration was unaffected by the subsequent expiration of a foreign patent for the same invention by reason of non-payment of taxes or non-working.

There was a second session of the Conference in December, 1900. Article 4 bis was not further debated. There was some reference to it as one of three arrangements "concerning retroactivity." Appellant hence insists that having that quality the article necessarily applied to existing patents and was a "plain and simple retroactive ending of the former dependence of existing patents upon the running of the terms allowed to foreign patents." To confine the provision, it is contended further, to "mere future contingencies that might befall patents would be prospective and not 'retroactive.' In aid of these contentions it is urged that the American delegates, two of whom were new, made no objection to the declaration of the retroactivity of Article 4 bis, and that no limiting protocol was annexed to the treaty when it was finally adopted at Brussels in 1900 and that the Article was ratified by the Senate and proclaimed by the President without qualifying it. The considerations have strength, but there are opposing ones. The second session of the Conference was a continuation of the first. The American delegates had secured an interpretation of Article 4 bis. It could be accepted by them as final and definite. There was no challenge of it by ascribing retroactivity to Article 4 bis, for that Article was recognized to have such effect but not to extend the term of a patent fixed by the initial law. Future contingencies, as said by appellant, would of course be prospective, but whether patents existing at the time of the treaty should be subject to them or independent of them was retroactive.

The action of Congress must be taken into account in estimating appellant's contentions. In United Shoe

Machinery Co. v. Duplessis Shoe Machinery Co., supra, it was made determinative, and the court decided that what construction should be put on Article 4 bis, and what rule should apply as to its becoming effective became academic questions in view of the provisions of the act of Congress of 1903, entitled "An Act to Effectuate the Provisions of the Additional Act of the International Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property." The act of 1903 was preceded by-and probably induced by-a letter which the Chargé d'Affaires of Switzerland addressed to the Secretary of State. The letter was prompted, according to its representations, by the embarrassment to which the International Bureau was subjected on account of the uncertainty of the action of the United States in regard to the Additional Act of Brussels of December 14, 1900, the treaty being so designated. It referred to the Convention of March 20, 1883, and the. approval by the Senate of that Convention in 1887, but it stated "that Congress had not brought into the Federal law the changes required to make it consonant with the Convention," and that, "according to the opinion rendered by Attorney General Miller in 1889, American courts have consistently decided that the Convention of 1883 could not be enforced in the United States except so far as it accorded with the law of the country." The opinion was expressed that the difficulties attending this condition of things were not so great as they would have been in some other country, but it was said, however, that the circumstances had changed since the Additional Act of Brussels went into effect. One of the most important of its provisions, it was said, was that which amends Article 4 of the Convention of 1883, extending to one year the priority of six months during which the original applicant for a patent in one of the States of the Union may validly file an application for the same invention in the other contracting States. After some comment on the priority

period, the letter proceeded as follows: "The Bureau is placed in an awkward situation. On the one hand, it cannot say that the United States will not enforce the Additional Act it has ratified and has asked should go into effect. On the other hand, it is without information that the bills relative to industrial property that have been framed in the committee organized under the act of June 4, 1898, have been passed by Congress; and it is constrained to admit that according to judicial precedents the new Treaty provisions could not be enforced until the corresponding legislation shall have been revised." The required legislation was urged.

The Secretary of State replied to the letter, describing it as "in regard to the provisions of the Industrial Property Convention of March 20, 1883, and the Brussels Act of December 14, 1900, modifying it," and said that he was advised by the Secretary of the Interior that he had prepared a bill "to make effective in this country the Convention and modifying Act in question."

The act of 1903 was then enacted, and if there could be any doubt that it expressed the sense of Congress and those concerned with the treaty that it required legislation to become effective, such doubt would be entirely removed by the legislative action of other States. It appears from the report of the Committee on Patents of the Senate and of the House of Representatives on the proposed legislation that thirteen countries had adopted legislation giving full force and effect to the provisions of the Additional Act either in the form of a general law or by specific amendment to other laws providing for carrying into force the provisions of the Additional Act as regards the extension of the "delay and priority" to twelve months. Other countries were mentioned as being expected to do so. In explaining the object of the bill the member in charge of it in the House of Representatives said that it was to carry into effect the Additional Act of the Convention held at VOL. CCXXVII-4

Brussels in December, 1900; and, further, that the Additional Act agreed upon simply extended the period of priority in applications for patents, and that it did not "extend by a single instant the life of any patent now in existence, or any patent that may be granted hereafter." He further said that nearly all of the nations which were represented at Brussels had already passed legislation to give force to the act and that it was but fair that this country should take similar action.

An attempt is made by appellant to distinguish between Article 4 bis and the provisions of the treaty expressly dealt with by Congress, and to assign to that Article a more distinct and definite power of execution than the other provisions possess. To account thereby for its omission from the act of 1903, it is urged, that those provisions concern matters of administrative law which might be or thought to be in conflict with statutory provisions, whereas Article 4 bis accomplished all that it could accomplish the instant the treaty went into effect and there was nothing further to be done as a matter of administrative law. We are unable to accept the distinction, and appellant is therefore brought to this alternative. If the treaty be construed, as we think it must be construed, in accordance with the declaration of the Conference at the instance of the American delegates, it has no application to the Cameron patent. If it be not self-executing, as it is certainly the sense of Congress that it was not and seems also to be the sense of some of the other contracting nations, and as the act of 1903 did not make effective Article 4 bis, the provisions of § 4887 apply to the Cameron patent, and caused it to expire with the British patent for the same invention.

Decree affirmed.

GRAY v. v. TAYLOR ET AL., AND LINCOLN COUNTY, TERRITORY OF NEW MEXICO.

TERRITORY OF NEW MEXICO, BY CLANCY, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ON THE RELATION OF ARAGON v. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF LINCOLN COUNTY, NEW MEXICO.

APPEALS FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF THE TERRITORY OF NEW MEXICO.

Nos. 322, 483. Submitted January 6, 1913.—Decided January 20, 1913.

In determining whether a statute is a local act of the nature prohibited by the Constitution, the legislature will not be supposed to be less faithful to its obligations than the court.

A local law means one that in fact even if not in form is directed only to a specific spot.

A law is not necessarily a local law because it happens to affect a particular spot.

The law of New Mexico Territory requiring that changes of county

seats shall not be made under certain conditions is not violative of the act of 1886 prohibiting the Territory from passing local laws because those conditions happen to apply to certain localities. In determining questions from the Territories not based on Federal law this court inclines towards following the local courts, Treat v. Grand Canyon Ry. Co., 222 U. S. 448, and so held as to questions relating to the passage of an act of the legislature of the Territory. Following the Supreme Court of the Territory held that the act of the legislature was properly passed, and the petition for change of county seat, and the ballots were not irregular.

A statute requiring the appointment for certain elections of a Registration Board sixty days before election does not apply to a special election ordered by a subsequent act to take place within sixty days after presentation of a petition.

15 New Mex. 742 and 16 New Mex. 467, affirmed.

THE facts are stated in the opinion.