EH.N: CfP: Session, "Innovation without patents (XVIII-XIX centuries), " XVth World Economic History Congress

[Alessandro Nuvolari]

Call for papers, XV World Economic History Congress, Utrecht August 3-7, 2009
Session: "Innovation without patents (XVIII-XIX centuries)"
http://www.wehc2009.org/programme.asp?sid=3D66

Organizers: Christine MacLeod, Liliane Hilaire-Perez, Alessandro Nuvolari

Recent research in economic history has paid increasing attention to 
the transformation of institutional frameworks supporting innovative 
activities during the early phases of industrialisation. In 
particular, most contributions in this field have attempted to 
discover the relationship between the emergence of modern patent 
systems and the rate and direction of technological change in 
different countries.

One of the findings of this literature has been that a sizable volume 
of inventive activities was undertaken outside the coverage of the 
patent system. In fact, patent systems were only one of the 
institutions supporting the generation of innovations in this 
historical phase. In specific circumstances, prizes and other public 
awards were rather successfully used for promoting innovations. In 
other circumstances, inventors and entrepreneurs preferred to follow 
innovation strategies that did not rely on patents, but on secrecy or 
on other alternative appropriation mechanisms. Finally, in some 
specific instances, the literature has also shown the importance of 
"collective invention". This means that inventors did not take 
patents, but they freely disclosed their inventions to one another 
(or might have been obliged to do so, by institutions like guilds). 
As a result of this sharing of knowledge, during the nineteenth 
century technologies such as blast furnaces and steam pumping engines 
exhibited very fast rates of technical change, as well as the 
Jacquard loom in France, an outcome of guild policy of innovation.

The aim of this session is to shed light on the significance and 
historical fortunes of inventive activities not covered by patents, 
in different contexts, during the early phases of industrialisation. 
The programme of the session will include two lead papers given by 
Petra Moser (Stanford University) and Robert C. Allen (Nuffield 
College, University of Oxford)

The organizers welcome suggestions and proposals for papers to be 
presented at the session. If you are interested in giving a paper, 
please send your proposal (max 1,000 words) to all three organizers. 
Proposals should be sent to the organizers before June 30, 2008. We 
would like especially to encourage contributions from young scholars 
(PhD students in the last stages of their thesis or scholars that 
have recently completed their PHD). We are currently considering the 
possibility of organizing a pre-session workshop (open also to some 
theoretical contributions and/or papers dealing with contemporary 
cases of innovation outside the patent system) to be held in early 
2009.

Paper proposals should be sent to
c.macleod at bristol.ac.uk
liliane.perez at wanadoo.fr
a.nuvolari at tue.nl

Please indicate in the subject "WEHC 2009 Innovation w/o Patents."