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This article studies the creation and consolidation of a trademark system tantamount to market integration and commercial specialization of Spanish regions from 1850 to 1920. We analyse the first 47,000 registrations, their geographical distribution and the drivers behind this trademark expansion. By using a lineal probability model, we find that knowledge spillovers across regions are associated with their relative trademark specialization and diversification. We incorporate the role played by transport infrastructure by calculating generalized transport costs. The results clarify the origins and evolution of geographical differences in commercial innovation and regional specialization in the first country to institute modern trademark legislation.

This is the second special issue resulting from the symposium titled ‘The Brand and Its History’. This issue aims at deepening the knowledge of the historical and cultural roots of the origin, uses...

This article studies the creation and consolidation of a trademark system tantamount to market integration and commercial specialization of Spanish regions from 1850 to 1920. We analyze the first 47,000 registrations, their geographical distribution, and the drivers behind this trademark expansion. By using a lineal probability model, we find knowledge spillovers across regions are associated with their relative trademark specialization and diversification. We incorporate the role played by transport infrastructure by calculating generalized transport costs. Our results clarify the origins and evolution of geographical differences in commercial innovation and regional specialization in the first country to institute modern trademark legislation.

We provide a first estimation of ground travel times between Spanish provinces circa 1867 (with a basic indicator of generalized transportations costs [GTCs]) and the geolocation of railway stations and stops between 1848 and 1930. This is work in progress that will be periodically updated with new times and GTCs estimations (for other years), new stop geolocations, and/or data correction when necessary.

The call for a special symposium on ‘The Brand and Its History’ has led to two journal issues that focus on trademarks and brands, respectively. This issue is devoted to trademarks, the more concre...

A significant argument in favor of patents is that they enable knowledge disclosure, which compensates for their social cost. Although patent institutions can influence disclosure levels by what they require before granting patents, innovators have a natural bias to conceal key information because such knowledge can make a competitor’s second-generation invention and patent more powerful. Despite interest in the subject, little empirical research has been carried out to analyze how much information patents actually disclose and how patentees and corporations historically manage these kinds of monopolies. Using a key case study of a radical innovation—the four-stroke engine, patented by Nicolaus August Otto in 1876—we conducted a detailed technical analysis of its patents in six countries. Our research provides new insights on issues related to full (or lack thereof) patent disclosure, the management strategies designed to maintain patent monopolies, and the effects of such monopolies on future innovation, knowledge, and control of marketplaces.

In spite of important recent work on the history of technology and the dynamics of technological change in Latin America, the literature in this field remains relatively undeveloped. In part, this is due to a relative scarcity of available sources for conducting research. This research note argues that national patent records are an important and untapped source for a wide range of studies on technology and technological change. The research note announces the creation of major new comprehensive databases of patent records in several Latin American countries, part of a larger, ongoing project to compile and make publically accessible patent records across the region. We also provide an introduction to the history of patents in Latin America, followed by a discussion of both the use (and misuse) of patents as historical evidence and recent advances in collecting and using patent evidence in Latin America. Resumen A pesar de valiosos trabajos sobre la historia de la tecnologia y las dinamicas del cambio tecnologico en America Latina, no se puede afirmar que exista una extensa historiografia sobre el asunto. En parte, esto se debe a la escasez relativa de fuentes de investigacion. Este articulo sostiene, precisamente, que los registros nacionales de patentes han sido muy poco explotados y pueden constituir una importante fuente para una amplia gama de estudios sobre la tecnologia y el cambio tecnologico. En concreto, se anuncia la creacion de nuevas y exhaustivas bases de datos historicas de patentes en varios paises de America Latina, como parte de un proyecto en curso, de mayor envergadura, que pretende compilar y hacer accesible al publico los registros de toda la region. Se aporta, en suma, una introduccion sobre la historia de las patentes en America Latina, seguida de un analisis de las ventajas e inconvenientes de su uso como evidencia historica, asi como de los ultimos avances en su recopilacion.

Sweden and Spain have developed very distinct systems of innovation over the long term. The former has a highly innovative economy while the latter drags serious problems in science and technology. However, during the first half of the nineteenth century both countries were latecomers to the industrial revolution in the European periphery with similar economic, technological, and institutional challenges ahead. In this paper, we hypothesize that one possible reason for this long-term divergence lies in the different collaboration patterns that emerge from interactions among innovative agents. To analyse such cooperation patterns we apply social network analysis methods and study co-patent networks in Sweden and Spain during the second industrial revolution (1878-1914). The results demonstrate that collaboration among innovators and openness to foreign influence was greater in Sweden than in Spain. This research opens new paths for further studies both on economic history and innovation networks dynamics

In this article, we reflect on how patents of introduction or importation, which compose an institutional policy related to weak IPR systems, could influence long-term international technology transfer. Both theoretically and empirically, the consequences of strengthening IPRs in lagging economies for technology transfer and innovation remain unclear. Although the mainstream literature tends to link stronger patent enforcement with better invention and innovation markets now and in the past, new theoretical and historical evidence supports extreme complexity in the relationship between IPR extension and scope and technological diffusion. For the first time, in this study, we analyze a large series of patents of introduction, which were a common feature of the early stages of almost all patent systems designed to favor technology transfer and innovation above original inventor property rights. Though typically used by pioneers, followers, and latecomers, we know little of how they functioned and their consequences. In this study, we analyze the use of patents of introduction throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Spain, which was a lagging country on the European periphery. The results demonstrate that this institutional policy could facilitate technology transfer, innovation, and advancement at earlier stages of industrialization. As additional research has demonstrated, such evidence may have serious implications for IPR treatment in both developing and underdeveloped economies.

The appropriateness of patent systems has been largely discussed and has led to substantial theoretical debates and empirical analyses. One of the most significant arguments in favor of patents is that they enable knowledge disclosure, which would compensate their social cost. Through an evolutionary approach to a key case study based on a radical innovation and business – the four-stroke engine invented by the German Nicolaus August Otto in 1876 – we provide new and fresh insights on the disclosure issue, on patent management hidden strategies, and on patent institutions and controversies.

Trademarks have traditionally been viewed as assets that, although intangible, nevertheless contribute to the success of firms. This study, based on a compilation of national trademark data, corrects existing distortions of the historical role of brands and their—often unsuccessful—use as business tools by countries, sectors, or firms. Legislation on, and the profuse use of, trademarks in the Western world was pioneered by Spain, rather than by France, the United States, or the United Kingdom, and was initiated in unusual sectors, such as papermaking and textiles, rather than in the more usual ones of food and beverages. Analysis of the applicants of Catalan trademarks, across sectors, during almost a century, reveals that the legal possession of a brand cannot in itself guarantee a firm's success.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, American corporations began their multinational expansion to Europe through direct investments in the most-developed economies. Being increasingly aware of scientific and technological knowledge business value, they also began to develop early IPR international protection strategies in order to defend their intangible assets abroad. Before World War II, many of these multinationals had also reached lagging peripheral countries, resulting in a complex European network of subsidiaries and affiliates that has been scarcely studied. This paper delves into the Babcock & Wilcox entrepreneurial conglomerate – one of the most interesting case studies of early multinational expansion – to analyze how it arrived and developed in Spain, what its business and innovation strategies in that market were, and the role of patent management in that process. Our findings reveal that corporate interests in patent capture, control, and administration not only shifted research and innovation handling within firms but also led to quick learning on how to successfully use IPRs as business, legal, and organizational tools for international expansion.

espanolEn este articulo se utilizan las series de patentes para profundizar en la estructura de la economia espanola entre 1759 y 1878, partiendo de la hipotesis de que la actividad inventiva es fruto de la demanda derivada dei proceso de crecimiento economico. Los resultados aclaran que la mayor parte de las patentes se concentraron en determinados sectores innovadores en expansion, entre los que es posible encontrar - ademas de a la industria textil y a los metales- a actividades que la historiografia no ha unido, habitualmente, con procesos de cambio tecnico e industrializacion en la epoca analizada. Es el caso de la transformacion de productos agrarios, la fabricacion de bienes de equipo, la quimica de consumo, la construccion o los servicios. A traves de un estudio detallado de las patentes es posible caracterizar y particularizar el proceso de avance tecnico en cada uno de estos sectores EnglishIn this paper we use patent statistics in order to analyse the structure of the Spanish economy between 1759 and 1878. We depart from the hypothesis that inventive activity is demand driven. The results show how at the beginning of the Spanish industrialisation the majority of patents were concentrated in a few innovative sectors. Besides the textile and basic metal industries, it is possible to find some other sectors that have not usually been linked to technical change nor to productivity growth during that period. This is the case for the food, beverages and tobaceo industries, machinery and equipment as well as chemical, construction and services sectors. A detailed analysis of patent records makes it possible to study the characteristics and peculiarities of the technical progress conceming each one of these sectors.

Introduction Pierre-Yves Donze and Shigehiro Nishimura Part 1: The International Patent System 1. Foreign Patenting in Germany, 1877-1932 Harald Degner and Jochen Streb 2. Why did Multinationals Patent in Spain? Several Historical Inquires J. Patricio Saiz and David Pretel 3. The Adoption of American Patent Management in Japan: The Case of General Electric Shigehiro Nishimura Part 2: The Role of Cartels 4. European Cartels and Technology Transfer: The Experience of the Rayon Industry, 1920 to 1940 Valerio Cerretano 5. Big Business, Inter-Firm Cooperation and National Governments: The International Aluminium Cartel, 1886-1939 Marco Bertilorenzi 6. The Swiss Watch Cartel and the Control of Technology Flows toward Rival Nations, 1930-1960 Pierre-Yves Donze Part 3: Learning from Foreign Firms 7. Technological Transfers in Argentina's Early Industrialization: Agents and Paths, 1900-1930 Maria Ines Barbero 8. American "Soft" Technologies and French Big Business after World War II: Alstom and GE Pierre Lamard 9. Foreign Technologies and Domestic Capital: The Rise of Independent Automobile Makers in China, 1990s-2000s Zejian Li Part 4: Engineers as Intermediaries 10. The Allied Forces and the Spread of German Industrial Technology in Post-War Japan Yuki Nakajima 11. The Introduction of American Mass Production Technology to Japan during the Occupation: The Case of Penicillin Julia Yongue 12. Agents of Change: Bell System Employees and Quality Assurance Knowledge Transfer in Postwar Japan, 1945-1955 Stephen B. Adams and Paul J. Miranti Afterword: Technology transfer and competitive advantage of regions Takafumi Kurosawa

We devote this paper to reflecting on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in the long run, particularly analyzing the case of Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although the interactions between IPRs and FDI have attracted significant research efforts in distinct economic and business areas, the results lack permanent answers. Our findings demonstrate that, from a macro-level perspective, 1) FDI and IPRs are effectively related in the long term; 2) weak IPR protection does not seem to have stopped FDI; and 3) the countries with major FDI in Spain were less worried about IPR management than others with less FDI.

Babcock et Wilcox, societe americaine specialisee dans la construction de chaudieres industrielles, consideree comme l’une des premieres grandes multinationales modernes, s’est implantee en Espagne des 1918. Cet article retrace l’histoire de cette longue presence au prisme des brevets : en s’appuyant sur de nombreux documents, il analyse en profondeur les strategies en matiere de propriete industrielle poursuivies tout au long du XXe siecle par la compagnie.

There is a widespread idea that corporations have completely taken over invention and innovation processes throughout the twentieth century, thus becoming the main users of patent systems. However, recent studies suggest that, in spite of corporate expansion, independent invention is still economically significant nowadays, and that individuals outside the boundaries of the firm were actually the principal source of innovation before World War II. This article analyzes the history of corporate and independent patents in Spain in the long-term, in order to confirm that independents were also very relevant to promoting innovation and technology transfer in latecomers with high rates of technological dependence. Employing a new method of work with patent files, we also offer new historical evidence of the structure, effectiveness and scope of emerging international social networks of innovation. After introducing the research framework, Section Two briefly summarizes the characteristics of the Spanish patent system, and compares corporate and independent patents taken out between 1820 and 1939. Section Three studies the duration and strength of independent patents and the structure of the communities of innovation, and the conclusions make up Section Four.

Although some recent studies have provided fresh intellectual insights on the role of patent practitioners during the nineteenth century, they have largely overlooked the activity of these actors in international patenting and peripheral countries. This study will fill a gap in the existing scholarship through an examination of the role and influence of patent agents in Spain from the introduction of the country’s first modern intellectual property law in 1826 to the regulation of agents’ practice in 1902. The study explores the range of activities carried out by those individuals employed by Spanish and foreign patentees to deal with both the patent application process and the commercialisation of property rights. Our argument here is that a focus on patent agents and other forms of agency can provide us with a better understanding of processes of invention, innovation and technology transfer in the European periphery during the nineteenth century. The history of technology in the periphery requires attention not only to the incentives for innovation but also to the social procedure of transmission of knowledge, ideas and information as well as the actors involved in this activity. Our focus cannot be solely on the transfer and communication of knowledge and information from advanced industrial nations to ‘backward’ ones; it must also include the processes of interaction, exchange and appropriation that occurred in both directions.

This article examines the relationship between colonialism and technology transfer via the study of nineteenth century Cuban institutions dedicated to the stimulation of innovative activity, particularly the patent system. Preliminary findings suggest three noteworthy claims. First, during the nineteenth century Cuban Creole elites set up a ‘Colonial Innovation System’ made up of ‘sub-imperial’ institutions autonomously administered in a context where rival Atlantic empires functioned as a ‘shadow’ economic metropolis of Cuba. Second, despite having the same patent laws as metropolitan Spain, Cuban sugar elites obtained practical control and management of the patent sub-institution on the island. Third, this achievement led to an autonomous functioning of the patent system in Cuba that allowed sugar-mill owners to participate actively in the global networks of technological exchange and to generate higher levels of patent activity than in metropolitan Spain.

In this paper we will explore how international corporations used the Spanish patent system in the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in order to discover what the actual effects of its apparent weakness were. The origins and evolution of corporate patenting in Spain, the effects of compulsory working clauses, the management of assignments, the various strategies followed by the firms, and the effects of patents on technology transfer to the Spanish economy will be clarified. The conclusions yields understanding on real patent management in the long-term by analyzing the strategies of Brown Boveri and Babcock Wilcox corporations in Spain.

From a long-term perspective, technological innovation could have come from local or domestic inventive and research activity, or from the transfer of foreign technology. In reality either option produces similar effects and often it was a combination of both which drove the historical acceleration of the rhythm of innovation and expansion of industry. This was fundamental for Great Britain and its early followers, and even more so for the latecomers and the underdeveloped countries. Spain, for example, suffered from scientific, technological and industrial backwardness which impeded the implementation of a national research and development infrastructure capable of generating competitive inventive activity. However, the national innovation system was designed, from the 18th century onwards, to favour the transfer of technology and human capital from abroad and thus establish the basis of modern economic growth and the process of industrialization. In this paper we will reflect on the design of the Spanish Innovation System, especially in one of its institutional aspects (the patent system), in order to understand the real role and function of a curios legal process the “patent of introduction”, which in practice promoted and permitted anyone to protect foreign third-person technologies in order to implement them locally, providing they were not already established. Although this legal practice represents a very clear declaration of intentions concerning the innovation policy and despite its existence in other patent systems in lagging countries, economic and technology historians have paid little or no attention to the subject. Therefore it is unclear how patents of introduction functioned and what consequences they had on the innovation and industrialization processes, especially in underdeveloped countries such as Spain, which, incredibly, maintained this practice until joining the European Union in 1986. We will attempt to shed light on how patents of introduction were established and how they evolved, the role they played in the promotion of innovation, who used them and how, and the real impact they had. The conclusions point out that, as with protectionism as a commercial policy, forcing national processes of innovation that take advantage of foreign inventions with or without respecting the original inventors rights – as generally occurs with the transfer of technology from abroad – could have positive consequences on the industrialization processes as well as helping lagging countries such as Spain to catch up with modern societies.

This paper studies the origins of trademark registration in Spain and offers, for the first time, data across sectors and regions with a long-term perspective. In apparent contradiction to the slow path of industrialization and the economic backwardness of Spain between 1850 and the 1940s, empirical evidence on trademark registration suggests that, in this field, Spanish policies and Spanish firms seemed to be well ahead of other countries. Spain was among the pioneering countries in the Western world in having a state legislation protecting brand registration since 1850. Also, some Spanish regions and industrialized sectors adopted similar strategies to those of its European counterparts in terms of using consistently branding and registered trademarks. Our evidence suggests that firms seem to have used brands and marks, first to fight against fraud and imitation and second to add intangible assets to its products in order to endow them with persistent identity trends regarding origins or quality of the product that were difficult to replicate, as often happened with patents. This created and accumulated, over that period of time, a marketing knowledge among consumers, which may have been useful to maintain the competitiveness of some industrial districts and regions.

This paper explores the nature and implications of nineteenth century patent law in two late-industrializing countries: Spain and Mexico. Both inherited earlier ancient regime monopoly practices, both adopted aspects of modern, codified patent systems in the early nineteenth century, and both sought primarily to encourage innovation and especially the introduction of foreign techniques. Mexico, however, abandoned this orientation in 1890 in favor of an emphasis on supporting inventive activity while Spain retained this orientation until recently. After presenting an overview of the conceptual and historical issues regarding comparative patent systems in section one; section two compares the nature of the Spanish and Mexican systems in the nineteenth century; while sections three and four examine the implications of patent law: its impact on trends in patenting behavior and —more tentatively— its probable consequences for investment in technological change.

Spanish Abstract: En este trabajo se intenta realizar una primera reflexion sobre el papel del capital humano exterior en el flujo de nuevos conocimientos y tecnologias hacia la Espana Moderna, en especial durante el siglo XVIII. En el se pretende estudiar las distintas fases historicas del fenomeno; su intensidad y caracter; los mecanismos de captacion del personal cualificado; los factores de repulsion y atraccion que explican las migraciones; la influencia de la evolucion del entorno institucional en el proceso; y el impacto de todo ello en los origenes remotos del debil –casi inexistente- sistema espanol de innovacion. Si pensamos, ademas, que existen cuestiones dificilmente imitables o transferibles –al menos en el corto plazo- y que las estructuras de valores sociales relacionadas con la invencion, la innovacion, el aprendizaje o la educacion (tan importantes durante la fase de extension de los procesos de industrializacion) pueden estar muy influidas por las trayectorias historicas, este intento de acercamiento deberia contribuir tambien a arrojar alguna luz sobre que cuestiones determinan, en general, la formacion de los sistemas de innovacion de paises atrasados y por que en Espana, en particular, se retraso tanto su organizacion, esta fue tan dependiente del exterior y, al contrario de lo sucedido en otros paises seguidores, nunca se desarrollaron nichos tecnologicos propios de especializacion. English Abstract: This paper reflects on the role of foreign human capital in the flow of new knowledge and technologies towards Modern Spain, especially during the eighteenth century. We study the distinct historical phases of such process, its intensity and character, recruitment mechanisms, skilled labor repulsion and attraction factors, institutional environment, and its overall impact on the origins of the weak Spanish innovation system.

This paper will attempt to reflect on the processes of international technology transfer at the beginning of European industrialization. During this period, when the achievement and the spread of technical innovations were vital to the acceleration of economic growth, the more underdeveloped countries experienced an increase in technological dependency on the leading countries. In some of them, the transfer of foreign technical information was more important than that generated by the nation itself, which —in spite of the cost increase of implanting foreign innovations, given the scant integration of international equipment markets— supposed a reduction of the degree of uncertainty associated with all processes of technological changes. The principal objective of the following pages is to analyse in detail the Spanish case, a country in obvious economic decline at the end of the 18th century and well below the average for Europe for most of the 19th century. This well-known delay translated into an external technological dependence in several economic sectors, which left its mark on the industrial protection system. Technological information which contains patent applications will be taken as a valid indicator —although only partial— of the direction and structure of the innovation processes in the Spanish economy. Upon careful study of the origin of patented inventions, it can be ascertained, among other things, the degree of dependence upon external technology; which countries played an essential role in the transfer of technology to Spain; and which economic sectors depended more on foreign technology.

The object of this study is to use documentation on patents as a partial technology indicator, and, above all, as an investment indicator in new technologies in order to analyze the formation, evolution and characterization of the Spanish technological system during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. From our point of view, ceteris paribus, the decision to patent is based on the intuitive expectation of profits with the new technology –which is influenced both by economic growth itself and by marketing possibilities, as well as by institutional questions, such as the real possibility of enforcing the patent monopoly– and the cost of obtaining the monopoly -in monetary and institutional terms (the existence of required exams or the necessity of implementation, etc.). In general, as occurs in other types of capital investments, success is determined by multiple circumstances, which does not invalidate the possibility of studying the intensity and direction of investment activity. To accomplish that, we will attempt to a) characterize and analyze the Spanish institutional environment related to industrial property to measure the degree to which it supported innovative activity; b) explain the evolution of registries throughout the 19th century and discover the degree of foreign presence in the system; c) analyze the patents solicited by residents in Spanish territory to see whether their geographic distribution over time is related to the formation and integration of the national market; d) study the presence of firms in the system and what socio-professional activities the applicants were engaged in, which could help determine the degree of complexity of technology in Spain; e) describe how the investment processes in technologies were distributed within the economic structure of the country to discover in which sectors innovative activity was concentrated and if it coincided with what we know about the Spanish industrialization process; and finally, f) study the obligatory exploitation of patents and the duration of monopolies, to attempt to uncover data on the real effectiveness of the system in inducing innovation and the forces which brought this about.