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The Global Rise of Patent Expertise During the Late Nineteenth Century

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Technology and Globalisation

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

Abstract

This chapter examines the rise of various forms of patent expertise over the course of the second industrialisation. The essential insight here is that patent agents and lawyers, as well as consultant engineers, became, in the late nineteenth century, critical actors in the production and transmission of patent rights and patented technologies within and among societies. This chapter considers three main themes. First, the global institutionalisation of patent agents during the late nineteenth century and their growing centrality in several national systems. Second, the transnational patenting networks created during the 1880s, particularly the activities of associations of patent agents and their impact on the making of an international patent system. Third, the controversial role of patent experts as agents of corporate globalism. The most important point remains that agents’ powers, and their many services to multinational corporations, had enduring consequences on the structure of knowledge property worldwide.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Shapin, S.: ‘Nibbling at the Teats of Science: Edinburgh and the Diffusion of Science in the 1830s’, in Inkster, I. and Morrell, J. (eds.): Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture, 1780–1850, London: Hutchinson, 1983, p. 151.

  2. 2.

    See, for instance, the contributions to the two following special issues: Galvez-Behar, G. and Nishimura, S.(eds): ‘Le management de la propriété industrielle’, Entreprise et Histoire, No.82 (2016); Inkster, I. (ed.): ‘Patent Agency in History: Intellectual Property and Technological Change’, History of Technology, Vol. 31 (2012).

  3. 3.

    See Kranakis, E.: ‘Patents and Power: European Patent-System Integration in the Context of Globalization’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 48, No. 4 (2007), pp. 689–728; Khan, Z.B.: ‘Selling ideas: An international perspective on patenting and markets for technological innovations, 1790–1930’, Business History Review, Vol. 87, No. 1 (2013), pp. 39–68.

  4. 4.

    Guagnini, A.: ‘Patent Agents in Britain at the turn of the 20th Century’, History of Technology, Vol. 31 (2012), p. 159.

  5. 5.

    Abbott, A.: The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

  6. 6.

    Inkster, I.: ‘Patent Agency: Problems and Perspectives’, History of Technology, Vol. 31 (2012), p. 91.

  7. 7.

    Swanson, K.: ‘The Emergence of the Professional Patent Practitioner’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 50, No. 3 (2009), pp. 519–548; van Zyl Smit, D.: ‘Professional Patent Agents and the Development of the English Patent System’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, Vol. 13 (1985), pp. 79–105; Gálvez-Behar, G.: ‘Des Médiateurs au Coeur du Système d’Innovation: Les Agents de Brevets en France (1870–1914)’ in Corcy, M., Douyère-Demeulenaere, C. and Hilaire-Pérez, L. (eds.): Les archives de l’invention. Ecrits, objets et images de l’activité inventive, Toulouse: Université Toulouse-Le Mirail, 2006, pp. 437–447.

  8. 8.

    See the articles on patent agents and patent management in Spain, Sweden, Japan and Germany in the special issues mentioned in Endnote 2. For Japan see as well Nicholas T. and Shimizu, H.: ‘Intermediary Functions and the Market for Innovation in Meiji and Taisho Japan’, Business History Review, Vol. 87, No.1 (2013), pp. 121–149. For Australia see Hack, B.: A History of the Patent Profession in Colonial Australia, Melbourne: Clement Hack & Co., 1984.

  9. 9.

    On the writing of patent specifications see, for example, Myers, G.: ‘From Discovery to Invention: The Writing and Rewriting of Two Patents’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1995), pp. 57–105.

  10. 10.

    Biagioli, M.: ‘Patent Republic: Representing Inventions, Constructing Rights and Authors`, Social Research, Vol. 73, No. 4 (2006), pp. 1129–1172.

  11. 11.

    Newton, A. V.: ‘On the Patent Agent and his Profession’, Transactions of the Institute of Patent Agents, Vol. I (1882–3), pp. 158–169.

  12. 12.

    Guagnini, A.: ‘Patent Agents, Legal Advisers and Guglielmo Marconi’s Breakthrough in Wireless Telegraphy’, History of Technology, Vol. 24 (2002), pp. 171–201.

  13. 13.

    Bowker, G.: ‘What’s in a Patent?’, in Bijker, Wiebe E. and Law, John (eds.): Shaping Technology Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992, pp. 53–75.

  14. 14.

    For patent disputes and their relationship to patent pool agreements see Usselman, S. W.: ‘Patents Purloined: Railroads, Inventors, and the Diffusion of Innovation in 19th-Century America’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 32, No. 4 (1991), pp. 1047–1075.

  15. 15.

    Good examples of scholarly research that acknowledges the various legal actors participating in patenting dynamics are Cambrosio, A., Peter Keating, P. and Mackenzie, M.: ‘Scientific Practice in the Courtroom: The Construction of Sociotechnical Identities in a Biotechnology Patent Dispute»’ Social Problems, No. 37 (1990), pp. 275–93; and Lucier, P.: ‘Court and Controversy: Patenting Science in the Nineteenth Century’, The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1996), pp. 139–154.

  16. 16.

    Bijker, W. E.: ‘The Social Construction of Bakelite: Toward a Theory of Invention’ in Bijker, W., et al.: The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987, pp. 164–173.

  17. 17.

    MacLeod, C.: ‘The Paradoxes of Patenting: Invention and Its Diffusion in 18th- and 19th-Century Britain, France, and North America’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 32, No. 4 (1991), pp. 885–910.

  18. 18.

    Lamoreaux, N. R. and Sokoloff, K. L.: ‘Intermediaries in the US Market for Technology, 1870–1920’ in Engerman S. L. et al. (eds.): Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp., 209–46; Cooper, C.: Shaping Invention: Thomas Blanchard’s Machinery and Patent Management in Nineteenth-Century America, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

  19. 19.

    Pretel, D. and Sáiz, P.: ‘Patent Agents in the European Periphery: Spain, 1826–1902’, History of Technology Vol 31, 2012, pp. 97–114.

  20. 20.

    For the French case, in 1881, 89 percent of “cabinets” of Patent Agents were established in Paris. Gálvez-Behar, Des Médiateurs; In Britain in 1893, 53 percent of agencies were located in London. Inkster, Patent Agency.

  21. 21.

    Khan, Z.: The Democratization of Invention: Patents and Copyrights in American Economic Development, 1790–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

  22. 22.

    Pretel and Sáiz, Patent Agents.

  23. 23.

    Other relevant mechanics’ and trade journals related with the patent business included The Artisan, The Repertory of Patent Inventors and Mechanics’ Magazine in Britain, The American Artisan, American Inventor and the Patent Right Gazette in the United States and Le Journal des Inventeurs and Moniteur des Inventions in France.

  24. 24.

    The contemporary agents’ literature on these topics is vast. These are just some pointers: Munn & Co., Hints to Inventors, New York: Munn & Co., 1867; Johnson, J. and Johnson, J. H.: The Patentee’s Manual, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890; Thompson, W.P.: The Patent Road to Fortune, London: Stevens & Sons, 1884; Thirion, C.: Législations Française et Étrangères sur les Brevets d’Invention: Tableau Synoptique, Paris: Dupont, 1878. Carpmael, A.: Patent Laws of the World, London: W. Clowes, 1889; Edwards E. and Edwards, A. E.: How to Take Out Patents in England and Abroad, London: Edwards and Co., 1905.

  25. 25.

    Armengaud, J. E.: The Practical Draughtsman’s. Book of Industrial Design, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1853. The original in French is Cours de Dessin Linéaire Appliqué au Dessin des Machines, Paris: Z. Mathias, 1840.

  26. 26.

    Dutton, H. I.: The Patent System and Inventive Activity during the Industrial Revolution 1750–1852, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984, pp. 43–51; Gálvez-Behar, Des Médiateurs; Usselman, Regulating Railroad Innovation, pp. 149–51.

  27. 27.

    Machlup, F. and Penrose, E.: ‘The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century’, The Journal of Economic History, Vol.10, No.1 (1950), pp. 1–29; Plasseraud, Y. and Savignon, F.: Paris 1883: Genèse du droit de brevets, Paris: Litec, 1983, pp. 102–6; Christine MacLeod, C.: ‘Concepts of Invention and the Patent Controversy in Victorian Britain’ in Fox, R. (ed.): Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996, pp. 137–153.

  28. 28.

    Sir Williams Thomson to Dr. Bryce, ‘Discussion on Patents’, Glasgow Philosophical Society (14 December 1869), cited in Smith C. and Wise, M. N.: Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 708.

  29. 29.

    ‘Inaugural Meeting’, Transactions of the Institute of Patent Agents, Vol. I, 1882–3, p. 46. For a contemporary account of international patenting see also Imray, O.: ‘On Foreign Patents’, Transactions of the Institute of Patent Agents, Vol. II, 1883–4.

  30. 30.

    May, C. and Shell, S.: Intellectual Property Rights: A Critical History, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006, pp. 115–117.

  31. 31.

    The British patent barrister Thomas Webster, a delegate at this conference, wrote about this meeting. Webster, T.: Congrès International des Brevets d’Invention tenu à l’Exposition Universelle de Vienne en 1873, Paris: Marchal, Billard et Cie, 1877.

  32. 32.

    Ricketson, S.: The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property: A Commentary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 36–39.

  33. 33.

    Cited in Seckelmann, M.: ‘The Indebtedness to the Inventive Genius: Global Expositions and the Development of an International Patent Protection’, in Barth, V. (ed.): Identity and Universality / Identité et universalité, Paris: Bureau International des Expositions, 2002, p. 132.

  34. 34.

    Congrès international de la propriété industrielle tenu à Paris du 5 au 17 septembre 1878, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1879.

  35. 35.

    Penrose, E.: The Economics of the International Patent System, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1951, pp. 48–55; Plasseraud and Savignon, Paris 1883, pp. 155–174; Gálvez-Behar, G.: La République des Inventeurs: Propriété et Organisation De l’Innovation en France, 1791–1922, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008, pp. 153–177.

  36. 36.

    See http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/paris/.

  37. 37.

    Penrose, The Economics of the International Patent System, Chapter 4; Plasseraud and Savignon, Paris 1883, pp. 205–9.

  38. 38.

    Ricketson, The Paris Convention, p. 69.

  39. 39.

    Stearns, P. N.: Globalization in World History, London and New York: Routledge, 2010, pp. 107–8.

  40. 40.

    Ricketson, The Paris Convention, pp. 75–6. See also the article by Max Georgii, founding member of this association, Georgii, M.: ‘International Association for the Protection of Industrial Property’, The Inventive Age, No.3 (March 1898), pp. 42–3.

  41. 41.

    See the Annuaires de L’Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Proprieté Industrielle published from 1897.

  42. 42.

    Annuaire de L’Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Proprieté Industrielle, 1902, Congrès de Turin, Paris, 1903, p. 31.

  43. 43.

    Callon, M.: ‘Techno-economic networks and irreversibility’, The Sociological Review, No. 38 (1990), pp. 132–161; Biagioli, ‘Patent Republic’.

  44. 44.

    For a sociological analysis of the idea of ‘interactional’ and ‘contributory’ expertise and the difference between experts and specialist see Collins, H. and Evans R.: Rethinking Expertise, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 23–38 and 77–90.

  45. 45.

    Magee, G. B. and Thompson, A. S.: Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 143–5.

  46. 46.

    ‘Professional Co-operation’, Journal of the Society of Patent Agents, Vol. II, No. 13 (January 1901), p. 1.

  47. 47.

    For a detailed study of the CIPA in the late nineteenth century see Guagnini, ‘Patent Agents in Britain’.

  48. 48.

    Paper read at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Institute, Howgrave Graham, H.: On the Progress and Work of the Institute of Patent Agents, London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1890.

  49. 49.

    Printed by the Calcutta Central Press Co. in 1892.

  50. 50.

    International Directory of Patent Agents, London: William Reeves, 1893, 1897 and 1901.

  51. 51.

    According to Ian Inkster, in the International Directory of Patent Agents for the year 1893, 2202 agencies were listed: 45% of them in the USA, 27% in France and 13% in Britain. Inkster, I.: ‘Engineers as patentees and the cultures of invention 1830–1914 and beyond: The evidence from the patent data’, Quaderns D’Historia de L’Enginyeria, Vol. VI (2004), pp. 25–50.

  52. 52.

    ‘The Desirability of an International System of Procedure for Protection of Invention’, Journal of the Society of Patent Agents, No. 44, 45 and 46 (1902–1903), p. 116.

  53. 53.

    There is a large literature on corporations and patent management; see, for instance, Andersen, B.: Technological Change and the Evolution of Corporate Innovation: The Structure of Patenting, 1890–1990, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001; Noble, D.: America by Design, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 84–109; Wilkins, M.: ‘The Role of Private Business in the International Diffusion of Technology’, The Journal of Economic History 34, No. 1 (1974), pp. 166–188.

  54. 54.

    For Chandler’s thesis see Chandler, A.: Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism, Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1990; Chandler, A.: The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.

  55. 55.

    May and Sell, Intellectual Property Rights, pp. 122 y 131.

  56. 56.

    According to Leonard Reich, industrial laboratories were ‘set apart from production facilities, staffed by people trained in science and advanced engineering who work toward deeper understanding of corporate-related science and technology, and who are organised and administered to keep them somewhat insulated from immediate demands yet responsive to long-term company needs’. Reich, L.S.: The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876–1926, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 3.

  57. 57.

    Fox and Guagnini, Laboratories, Workshops, and Sites, pp. 158 and 166–7.

  58. 58.

    Schumpeter, J. A.: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 6th ed., London: Routledge, 2003, p. 132.

  59. 59.

    Smith, G. D.: The Anatomy of a Business Strategy: Bell, Western Electric and the Origins of the American Telephone Industry, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

  60. 60.

    Reich, The Making of American Industrial Research, p. 3.

  61. 61.

    Bruland, K.: ‘The Management of Intellectual Property at Home and Abroad: Babcock & Wilcox, 1850–1910’, History of Technology, Vol. 24 (2002), pp. 151–170.

  62. 62.

    For a recent study on the corporate monopoly in the telephone sector constructed by patent litigation see Beauchamp, B.: Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent that Changed America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.

  63. 63.

    Gooday, G. and Arapostathis, S.,: Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013; Bijker, ‘The Social Construction of Bakelite’; Van den Belt, H.: ‘Action at a Distance: A.W. Hofmann and the French Patent Disputes about Aniline Red (1860–63), or How a Scientist May Influence Legal Decisions without Appearing in Court’, in Smith, R. and Wynne, B. (eds.): Expert Evidence: Interpreting Science in the Law, London: Routledge, 1988, pp. 185–209.

  64. 64.

    Inkster, I.: Science and Technology in History: An Approach to Industrial Development, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991, p. 113; Fox and Guagnini have also identified ‘protective patenting’ strategies among large German chemical firms in the late nineteenth century. Fox and Guagnini, Laboratories, Workshops, and Sites, p. 158.

  65. 65.

    According to Edith Penrose, in the last decades of the nineteenth century ‘patents were used to protect international markets’, Penrose, The Economics of the International, p. 89. The relationship between the effectiveness of the patent protection in a country and the commercialisation of technology is well developed in Arora, A.: ‘Trading Knowledge: An Exploration of Patent Protection and Other Developments of Market Transactions in Technology and R&D’, in Lamoreaux, N. and Sokoloff, K. (eds): Financing Innovation in the United States, 1870 to the Present, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2007, pp. 365–403. According to Arora, “patent protection and commercialisation are strategic complements” (p. 371).

  66. 66.

    Noble, America by Design, pp. 84–109.

  67. 67.

    Nishimura, S.: ‘The Rise of the Patent Department: An Example of the Institutionalization of Knowledge Workers in the United States’, Entreprises et histoire, Vol. 82, No. 1 (2016), pp. 47–63. An early example of corporate professional management of industrial property rights is the French firm Schneider and Cie and its patents in metallurgy. D’Angio, A.: ‘The Industrial and Financial Use of Patent by Schneider & Cie in the 19th Century (1836–1883)’, in Merger, M. (ed.): Transferts de Technologies en Méditerranée, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2006, pp. 345–358.

  68. 68.

    Galambos, L.: ‘The Role of Professionals in the Chandler Paradigm’, in Lazonik, W. and Teece, D. (eds.): Management Innovation: Essays in the Spirit of Alfred Chandler, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 125–146.

  69. 69.

    D8846ACD; TAEM 124:80; and D8846, Document Files Series 1888: D-88-46-Patents (Alfred Ord Tate to Richard Nott Dyer, 08/08/1888).

  70. 70.

    Pretel, D. and Fernandez-de-Pinedo, N.: ‘Circuits of Knowledge: Foreign Technology and Transnational Expertise in Nineteenth-Century Cuba’ in Leonard, A. and Pretel, D. (eds.), The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy: Circuits of Trade, Money and Knowledge, 1650–1914, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 263–289.

  71. 71.

    Todd, J.: Colonial Technology: Science and the Transfer of Innovation to Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Beatty, E.: Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico, Oakland: University of California Press, 2015, pp. 134–153.

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    David Pretel

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    David Pretel

  2. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

    Lino Camprubí

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Pretel, D. (2018). The Global Rise of Patent Expertise During the Late Nineteenth Century. In: Pretel, D., Camprubí, L. (eds) Technology and Globalisation. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75450-5_6

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