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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by Akademie Verlag June 5, 2019

The Patent System during the French Industrial Revolution: Institutional Change and Economic Effects

  • Gabriel Galvez-Behar

    Gabriel Galvez-Behar is Professor of History at the University of Lille. His research focuses on the history of innovation and on the commercialization of scientific research. He is the author of La République des inventeurs : propriété et organisation de l’innovation en France (1791-1922) (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008). He has recently co-edited two special issues on the academic entrepreneurship: “Commercializing science: nineteenth- and twentieth-century academic scientists as consultants, patentees, and entrepreneurs”, History and Technology (2017, with Joris Mercelis and Anna Guagnini); “Academic entrepreneurship and institutional change in historical perspective”, Management and Organizational History (2017, with R. Daniel Wadhwani, Joris Mercelis and Anna Guagnini).

Abstract

The influence of the patent system on the economic performance of Western countries during the Industrial Revolution is an important but difficult question to address. With the United Kingdom and the United States, France was one of the first countries to adopt a modern patent legislation in 1791. The aim of this paper is to understand the paradox of such a system, which was based on a democratic and natural-right conception of invention but turned out to be restrictive. It analyses the legal framework and its evolution from 1791 to the late 1850s and reveals its contradictory aspects: a natural right inspiration vs a restrictive access due to the cost of the patent. It shows how the 1844 Patent Act reform did not end the criticism of the French patent system. Then, in a second part, it considers the diffusion of patents in time, in different regions and industries and stresses the heterogeneity of the patent system.

JEL Classification: N 73; 0 14; 0 34

About the author

Prof. Dr. Gabriel Galvez-Behar

Gabriel Galvez-Behar is Professor of History at the University of Lille. His research focuses on the history of innovation and on the commercialization of scientific research. He is the author of La République des inventeurs : propriété et organisation de l’innovation en France (1791-1922) (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008). He has recently co-edited two special issues on the academic entrepreneurship: “Commercializing science: nineteenth- and twentieth-century academic scientists as consultants, patentees, and entrepreneurs”, History and Technology (2017, with Joris Mercelis and Anna Guagnini); “Academic entrepreneurship and institutional change in historical perspective”, Management and Organizational History (2017, with R. Daniel Wadhwani, Joris Mercelis and Anna Guagnini).

Acknowledgement

I want to thank the guest editors for their insights and useful comments. I thank also the Institut national de la propriété industrielle (INPI) and especially Steeve Gallizia and Valérie Marchal for their help in this research, which has been conducted as part of a collaboration between the INPI and the IRHIS.

Published Online: 2019-06-05
Published in Print: 2019-05-27

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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