Patent Cultures
Diversity and Harmonization in Historical Perspective

Tracing global histories of patenting, this book reveals the resilient diversity of patent systems, challenging the universality of 'intellectual property'.

Graeme Gooday (Edited by), Steven Wilf (Edited by)

9781108468886, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 July 2022

380 pages, 11 b/w illus. 15 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

This book explores how dissimilar patent systems remain distinctive despite international efforts towards harmonization. The dominant historical account describes harmonization as ever-growing, with familiar milestones such as the Paris Convention (1883), the World Intellectual Property Organization's founding (1967), and the formation of current global institutions of patent governance. Yet throughout the modern period, countries fashioned their own mechanisms for fostering technological invention. Notwithstanding the harmonization project, diversity in patent cultures remains stubbornly persistent. No single comprehensive volume describes the comparative historical development of patent practices. Patent Cultures: Diversity and Harmonization in Historical Perspective seeks to fill this gap. Tracing national patenting from imperial expansion in the early nineteenth century to our time, this work asks fundamental questions about the limits of globalization, innovation's cultural dimension, and how historical context shapes patent policy. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the contested role of patents in the modern world.

Part I. Introductory: 1. Diversity versus harmonization in patent history: an overview Graeme Gooday and Steven Wilf
2. The 1883 Paris Convention and the impossible unification of industrial property Gabriel Galvez-Behar
3. One for all? The American patent system and harmonization of international intellectual property laws Zorina Khan
Part II. Americas: Technical Imaginaries: 4. US patent models as specimen and specification Courtney Fullilove
5. Mexico and the puzzle of partial harmonization: nineteenth-century patent Law reconsidered Edward Beatty
6. An early patent system in Latin America: the Chilean case, 1840s–1900s Bernardita Escobar Andrae
Part III. Southern Europe: 7. The Italian patent system during the long nineteenth century: from privileges to property rights in a latecomer industrializing country Alessandro Nuvolari and Michelangelo Vasta
8. Industrial 'property', law, and the politics of invention in Greece, 1900–1940 Stathis Arapostathis
9. Mediation and harmonization: construction of the Spanish patent system in the twentieth century Ana Romero de Pablos
Part IV. Central and Eastern Europe: 10. The struggle over 'the social function of intellectual work in the economy of nations': engineers, patent law, and enterprise inventions in Germany and their European significance Karl Hall
11. Multiple loyalties: hybrid patent regimes in the Habsburg empire and its successor states Karl Hall
12. Patent debates on invention from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union Karl Hall
Part V. Asia: 13. Patent policy in India under the British Raj: a bittersweet story of empire and innovation Rajesh Sagar
14. The India twist to patent culture: investigating its history Tania Sebastian
15. The life and times of patent no. 2,670: industrial property and public knowledge in early twentieth-century Japan Kjell Ericson
Part VI. Epilogue: 16. Postscript Graeme Gooday and Steven Wilf.

Subject Areas: Intellectual property law [LNR], Monetary economics [KCBM], Human rights [JPVH], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]