3 - Industrialists, inventors and the German patent system, 1877–1957: A comparative perspective

Abstract

This chapter presents a comparative analysis of industrialists, inventors, and the German patent. The chapter reveals that the modern German patent system came into existence in the last quarter of the 19th century in reaction to the perception of excessive authorial or inventor rights in French, British, and American patent law. The German system also anticipated systematic research and development (R&D) in the modern research laboratory. It was based on the so-called first-to-file system and it developed the concept of the “company invention” to deprive inventors, especially employee inventors, of any residual rights in their inventions. Inventor discontent resulted in numerous failed patent reform attempts that finally succeeded in the 1930s and early 1940s. The National Socialist regime made the company invention illegal, changed the theoretical underpinnings of the patent code to introduce the inventor's right principle, and adopted statutory inventor compensation. These reforms survived the Third Reich and became an integral part of the Federal Republic's consensus-based political economy.