Melbourne Office Celebrates Centenary

The Melbourne Office of Griffith Hack celebrates the centenary of its founding in 1904 by Clement Alfred Hack, born at Adelaide in the then colony of South Australia in 1877 and grandson of one of the early pioneers. He graduated in metallurgy from the South Australian School of Mines in 1898, and found employment with patent agent Francis H. Snow in Adelaide.

In those days each of the Australian colonies had its own patent law, and patents were only effective within the colony in which they were granted. It seems that Australia led the world in legislating to regulate the patent profession; New South Wales enacted the first colonial Patents Act in 1852 and licensing of patent agents was introduced in South Australia in 1877 and in Victoria in 1879.

One of the politicians involved in the debates leading up to Federation of the six States and the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 was the Hon. Arthur Griffith, who had established a patent agent's practice in Sydney in 1895, the forerunner of the present Sydney office of Griffith Hack. But that is a different story.

The new Constitution provided for the Commonwealth to assume the power to legislate for patents to be effective throughout Australia. The first Commonwealth Patents Act was the Act of 1903, and the Commonwealth Patent Office was established in Melbourne in 1904.

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