[Patents] DE 1873: conservative patenting approach

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> I find this most interesting.
>
> Would you have a reference ... preferably accessible on the web ?

I wrote a short summary of one good article about this subject on

        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/boch97-gispen-de/

The article is in German, written by Kenneth Gispen, an American scholar
specialising on the history of the patent system in Germany.

My summary is also in German, and it doesn't tell you any more than what I
wrote below.

You may find more about this in other writings of Gispen as well as in
Machlup's great report to the American Congress, written in 1958.

There are some more fascinating historical details about this.  Gispen
writes that the "conservative patenting approach" taken in Germany after
1873 was rather favorable to the enormous economic growth that Germany
experience in the ensuing decades.  On the other hand, it created a great
dissatisfaction among lawyers and small inventors, who joined together to
form a second "patent movement", also called "inventor romanticism", whose
aim it was to popularise "intellectual property" and to let the small man
participate in what seemed like a privilege of the big enterprises.
This "inventor romanticism" was taken up by some parts of the German
Social Democratic Party, but, more importantly, by Hitler and his National
Socialist Party.  There are even a few excerpts in "Mein Kampf" that
stress the importance of popularising the patent system and of supporting
the small inventor as a kind of avanguarde of the nation to be put under
special organisational tutele of the Party.  In 1934-5 there was then a
struggle between the "conservative patenting" approach, which was still
favored by the big industry, and the "inventor romanticism" approach
favored by NSDAP activists.  The latter prevailed, and the mass-organised
inventor romanticism was actually used as a tool for promoting military
production under Albert Speer, who was a kind of organisational genius and
well respected in the world even after the war, due to his honest stance
at the Nuremberg trials, where he was handed a 20 years sentence.

In the 1950s, the large industry corporations again advocated a return to
"conservative patenting", but the other side successfully argued that
"inventor romanticism" was a cause in its own right and shouldn't be
discredited because of its accidental historical ties to the NS regime.
The result was the "employee invention law"
(Arbeitnehmer-Erfinder-Gesetz), which is still a german specialty.  It is
the law on which a recent new drive to oblige professors to submit all
their ideas to a to-be-built university patent department is built.  The
ArbEG stipulates that each employee inventor must receive 30% of the
benefits that the employer reaps from the patent.  This is in fact a
source of popularity of the patent system in Germany, but it also has dark
sides:

- the employee is often cheated (the employer says "good idea but should
  rather be kept secret than patented" and then two months later patents
  it under a different name, in order to avoid having to pay the 30%)
- the relationship between employer and employee becomes antagonistic.
  Employees try to privately patent things that the company really needs
  to keep secret
- world companies avoid placing their R&D centers in Germany

The darkest side is of course the current German law proposal, which
attempts to turn universities into patent factories and professors into
dependent patent production workers.  So far they did not fall under ArbEG
but were free to use their knowledge as they pleased.  More about this on

        http://swpat.ffii.org/cnino/

It looks like there is a very strong lobby pushing this.
And from the historical development, you can see the path of patent
inflation, coming about in several dialectic turns.

> On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 12:16:37PM +0200, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
> > > > >From who's pockets?
> > > >
> > > > Patent applicants should pay more to get patents.  That's whose 
> > > > pockets.
> > >
> > > So only rich people (read, companies) deserve to get patents ?
> > >
> > > Great idea!
> >
> > In fact this is not all that bad an idea.
> > It was one of the restrictions imposed on the patent system when it was
> > introduced in Germany in 1873.
> > A patent cost a horrendous sum, I think it was 15000 Reichsmark, but I may
> > be wrong.
> > This was advocated by Werner von Siemens, president of the Patent
> > Protection Assiciation (Patentschutzverein), the pressure group that
> > helped overcome the resistance of the economists in the 1860s and 70s.
> > They told the economists that this high price was to make sure that
> > patents were only granted in areas where largescale industrial property
> > was at stake, and they were a means of better regulating competition
> > between large enterprises, and by no means designed as a system for
> > personal "intellectual property", a term which even people like Siemens
> > considered nonsense and dangerous.
> >
> > Of course this compromise between patent lobbyists and economists implied
> > that there can be no software patents, simply because software does not
> > necessarily imply an expensive industrial apparatus.
> >
> > It is hardly worth noting in that context that we just stumbled across
> > another of the many inconsistencies in Greg's proposals.
> >
> > -phm
> >
> >
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