US Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 2. Statistics

Abstract

This is the second part of a two-part article on the origins, history and profile of Alien Property Custodian (APC) documents. The APC was responsible for administering American property, including patents, seized from nationals of enemy and enemy-occupied countries during World War II. Part 1 covered the wartime organization and activities of the APC, vesting orders and the agency’s patent portfolio. Part 2 describes APC documents (patent applications published by the US Patent Office at the request of the APC), the national and technological profiles of these documents and snapshots of the inventors who lost and, in some cases, regained their patent rights. APC documents are a small and little known but historically important collection of prior art documents.