Catalogue description Central Committee on Awards to Inventors (Morris Committee): Claims Files

An interdepartmental Committee on Patents, chaired by Kenneth Lee, reported in 1922 on "the methods of dealing with inventions made by workers aided or maintained from public funds". The Lee report recommended the creation of an interdepartmental body to "deal with matters arising in connection with inventions made with the aid of public funds" and further recommended that "so far as inventions made by Government servants are concerned... the functions of the present Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors should... be taken over by the... board".

The Civil Service National Whitley Council set up a Patents Committee in 1925 to "consider the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Patents so far as it affects inventions made by Civil Servants, and to report to the Council."

The patents Committee of the NWC agreed the Lee Committee's recommendation in its report, published in 1930. Formal notification of the setting up of the Central Committee, and of the appointment of Sir Harold Morris KCB MBE as President and Mr H Parker MC as Secretary was made in a Treasury Circular of 5 August 1930.

The committee received 13 notifications of appeal between 1931 and 1940, 11 cases actually going to formal hearings, and 2 appeals being withdrawn.

By 1940 the Central Committee had ceased to meet, but its Secretary, always a Treasury official, was the Ex Officio Treasury representative on the various Departmental Committees on Awards which had largely taken over its work on the outbreak of war.