Cambridge University Press Patent Cultures: Diversity and Harmonization in Historical Perspective: 52 (Cambridge Intellectual Property and Information Law, Series Number 52)

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. Book Description Tracing global histories of patenting, this book reveals the resilient diversity of patent systems, challenging the universality of 'intellectual property'. About the Author Graeme Gooday is Professor of the History of Science and Technology in the University of Leeds' School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science. From 2007–10 he led the AHRC-funded project Owning and Disowning Invention, which produced the prize-winning Patently Contestable (2013) with co-author Stathis Arapostathis. He was also co-leader with Claire L. Jones of the international research network Rethinking Patent Cultures (2014), the first workshop of which generated this volume.Steven Wilf is the Anthony J. Smits Professor of Global Commerce at the University of Connecticut Law School where he founded the Intellectual Property program. He has served as Microsoft Fellow at Princeton University and Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the United States Copyright Office. He is the author of The Law before the Law (2008), Law's Imagined Republic: Popular Politics and Criminal Justice in Revolutionary America (Cambridge, 2010), and numerous articles.