The Struggle over “the Social Function of Intellectual Work in the Economy of Nations”: Engineers, Patent Law, and Enterprise Inventions in Germany and Their European Significance

The German patent system launched in 1877 has usually been treated merely as a later variant of the Anglo-American system. Yet the German system was novel in allowing both State and judiciary unprecedented discretion to constrain the rights claims of inventors, with prolonged debates on the abstract principles that should guide the legal frameworks of patenting practice. Moreover, due to the economic power of Germany in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, neighboring nations tended to follow its patent model to a significant extent. The success of the Germanic system in its variant forms thus a significant factor in the rapid subsequent development of patent systems in Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe. As German patent theorists continued to debate the statutory rationales for patents as a species of intellectual property for half a century, the variety of ideological interpretations to which the German system was susceptible was another reason why other nation-states drew upon it in developing their own distinctive forms of patent legislation.