Patently contestable : electrical technologies and inventor identities on trial in Britain / Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Arapostathis, Stathis, author.

Contributor:

Gooday, Graeme.

Series:

Inside technology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Patent laws and legislation--Great Britain--History.

Patent laws and legislation.

Patent suits--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Patent suits.

Patent suits--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Electric apparatus and appliances--Great Britain--Patents.

Electric apparatus and appliances.

Inventors--Legal status, laws, etc--Great Britain.

Inventors.

Electric apparatus and appliances--Great Britain--History.

History.

Inventors--Legal status, laws, etc.

Patents.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 294 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2013]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Late nineteenth-century Britain saw an extraordinary surge in patent disputes over the new technologies of electrical power, lighting, telephony, and radio. These battles played out in the twin tribunals of the courtroom and the press. In Patently Contestable, Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday examine how Britain's patent laws and associated cultures changed from the 1870s to the 1920s. They consider how patent rights came to be so widely disputed and how the identification of apparently solo heroic inventors was the contingent outcome of patent litigation. Furthermore, they point out potential parallels between the British experience of allegedly patentee-friendly legislation introduced in 1883 and a similar potentially empowering shift in American patent policy in 2011. After explaining the trajectory of an invention from laboratory to Patent Office to the court and the key role of patent agents, Arapostathis and Gooday offer four case studies of patent-centered disputes in Britainches These include the mostly unsuccessful claims against the UK alliance of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison in telephony; publicly disputed patents for technologies for the generation and distribution of electric power; challenges to Marconi's patenting of wireless telegraphy as an appropriation of public knowledge; and the emergence of patent pools to control the market in incandescent light bulbs.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Analyzing Disputed Electrical Invention 1

2 The Territorial Dynamics of Managing Inventors' Rights 33

3 Configuring and Defending Patenting Strategies: Experts, Judges, and Witnesses in Action 59

4 Patents and Identity in Early UK Telephony Disputes 87

5 Contested Dynamos and Wires: Tribunals of Technologies, Ownership, and Identities 113

6 Gift to the World? The Contested Status and Rewards of Early Wireless Telegraphy 141

7 Patents, Identities, and Ownership in the British Electric Lamp Industry, 1878-1920 175

8 Conclusion: Cultures of Invention and Knowledge Management in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 201.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

0262313413

9780262313414

OCLC:

854994615

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.