18 - Jean-Louis van DIEVOET-WITTOUCK (1777-1854) [1]

Jean-Louis van DIEVOET was Secretary of the Belgian Cour de Cassation, and married to Jeanne WITTOUCK. He was a member of a bourgeois family of Brussels [2]. 

On 25 February 1842, DIEVOET, at the age of 65, then négociant in Bruxelles, applied for a “brevet d’importation” in the Grand-Duché de Luxembourg for a:

Procédé de fabrication rationnelle applicable à la préparation de peaux

The application was based on a French patent application filed by Alexandre Joseph BEAUSSIER on 6 December 1841 [3]. 

The fact that the application was not based on a granted patent was of concern to the Luxembourg Administration and the matter was referred to La Haye. The question was: 

does the Patent Law require that the imported patent be actually granted or can it be an application only? [4]

The Dutch authorities did not have any objections to accepting a brevet d’importation on the basis of a patent application in a third country, as long as this fact was mentioned in the patent petition.

With respect to the DIEVOET patent application, the Dutch examiner LIPKENS informed that a brevet d’importation for the same BEAUSSIER invention had already been granted for the Netherlands to another person but that this should not prevent DIEVOET from obtaining a patent for the same invention for the territory of Luxembourg.

DIEVOET withdrew the application:

A l'honneur de vous exposer Jean Louis Dievoet-Wittouck, marchand domicilié à Bruxelles, que le 19 février de l'année courante il a déposé une demande en brevet d'importation pour la préparation de peaux, que, par suite de circonstances survenues depuis, il se voit forcé de retirer cette demande. 

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[1] Family Search databank

[2] Wikipedia

[3] FR patent, cote BA8084

[4] The Luxembourg Administration profited from this occasion to raise additional issues, namely those related to the effects of the new status of the Grand-Duché (post 1839) on the patent granting procedure. Concrete proposals were made. The grant fees would have to be revised in view of a much more reduced size of territory for which patents were to be granted and the granting procedure would have to be carried out in Luxembourg, both in terms of the receiving office and the examination authority. 

(22/02/2021)