Book ID: CBB001500374

Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain (2013)

unapi

Arapostathis, Stathis (Author)
Gooday, Graeme J. N. (Author)
Gooday, Gaeme (Author)


MIT Press


Publication Date: 2013
Physical Details: xv + 294 pp.; ill.
Language: English

Late nineteenth-century Britain saw an extraordinary surge in patent disputes over the new technologies of electrical power, lighting, telephony, and radio. These battles played out in the twin tribunals of the courtroom and the press. In Patently Contestable, Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday examine how Britain's patent laws and associated cultures changed from the 1870s to the 1920s. They consider how patent rights came to be so widely disputed and how the identification of apparently solo heroic inventors was the contingent outcome of patent litigation. Furthermore, they point out potential parallels between the British experience of allegedly patentee-friendly legislation introduced in 1883 and a similar potentially empowering shift in American patent policy in 2011. After explaining the trajectory of an invention from laboratory to Patent Office to the court and the key role of patent agents, Arapostathis and Gooday offer four case studies of patent-centered disputes in Britain. These include the mostly unsuccessful claims against the UK alliance of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison in telephony; publicly disputed patents for technologies for the generation and distribution of electric power; challenges to Marconi's patenting of wireless telegraphy as an appropriation of public knowledge; and the emergence of patent pools to control the market in incandescent light bulbs.- Publisher

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Reviewed By

Review Guagnini, Anna (2015) Review of "Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 471-472). unapi

Essay Review Israel, Paul (2014) Contesting the History of Invention. Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 645-648). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001500374/

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Authors & Contributors
Gooday, Graeme J. N.
Arapostathis, Stathis
Moore, Abigail Harrison
Delargy, P. J. R.
Kennedy, William P.
Mohsin, Anto
Concepts
Electricity; magnetism
Electric power industry
Electrification
Technology
Lighting, electric
Radio
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
18th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Canada
Bali (Indonesian island)
Pacific Northwest (North America)
São Paulo (Brazil)
Institutions
London Stock Exchange
Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company, Ltd.
Anglo-American Brush Electric Light (firm)
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