Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial PowerDuring the first decades of America’s existence as a nation, private citizens, voluntary associations, and government officials encouraged the smuggling of European inventions and artisans to the New World. At the same time, the young republic was developing policies that set new standards for protecting industrial innovations. This book traces the evolution of America’s contradictory approach to intellectual property rights from the colonial period to the age of Jackson. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Britain shared technological innovations selectively with its American colonies. It became less willing to do so once America’s fledgling industries grew more competitive. After the Revolution, the leaders of the republic supported the piracy of European technology in order to promote the economic strength and political independence of the new nation. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States became a leader among industrializing nations and a major exporter of technology. It erased from national memory its years of piracy and became the world’s foremost advocate of international laws regulating intellectual property. |
From inside the book
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... inventor of the cotton gin . Whitney and Miller , however , could neither monopolize nor control the manufacturing of cotton gins . They filed suits against infringers of their patent and turned to state legislatures in search of legal ...
... inventors and ruled that prior use anywhere auto- matically invalidated a patent . Alas , this principled commitment to absolute intellectual property had little to do with reality . Smuggling technology from Europe and claiming the ...
... inventors and authors are , thus , recognized and rewarded for their ingenuity . ” For all their economic and diplomatic might , however , developed nations have thus far failed to enforce their intellectual property regime . In 1999 ...
... inventor originates in the same philosophical orientation and in the same historical era . While my focus is , for the most part , on physical expressions of intellectual property , my discussion is never divorced entirely from ...
... inventors' control. Inventions were distinct forms of nonmaterial commodities that did not have a specific value in the marketplace. Neither Greek nor Roman law protected intellectual property, though accusations of theft of knowledge ...
Contents
1 | |
18 | |
44 | |
The American Seduction of Machines and Artisans | 78 |
Chapter 5 Ocial Orchestration of Technology Smuggling | 104 |
Chapter 6 Constructing the American Understanding of Intellectual Property | 142 |
Chapter 7 The Path to Crystal Palace | 184 |
Notes | 215 |
Index | 269 |
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Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power Doron S. Ben-Atar No preview available - 2004 |