(NAS Colloquium) Science, Technology and the Economy (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Long-term change in the organization of inventive activity
Long-term change in the organization of inventive activity
Pages 32-38
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From page 32... ...
At the heart of this change in the organization of inventive activity was a set of familiar developments which had significant consequences for the supply and demand of inventions. On the supply side, the growing complexity and capital intensity of technology raised the amount of human and physical capital required for effective invention, making it increasingly desirable for individuals involved in this activity to specialize.
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From page 33... ...
The Patent Office itself published an annual list of patents issued, but private publications emerged early in the nineteenth century to improve upon this service. For example, Scientific American featured articles about technological developments, printed complete lists of patents issued on a weekly basis, and provided readers with copies of patent specifications for a small fee.
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From page 34... ...
Finally, a new sample of assignment contracts recently put in machine-readable form is the third data set we employ. The so-called Liber data set contains nearly 4600 contracts, assembled by collecting every contract filed with the Patent Office during January 1871, January 1891, or January 1911.
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From page 35... ...
There may have been other contributors to the sharp change in the distribution of patents across patentees, but this evidence that a major increase in the degree of specialization occurred as early as the middle third of the nineteenth century before the emergence of research laboratories housed in large-scale enterprises is important (7, 13~. The idea that the increase in specialization at invention was facilitated, if not promoted, by an enhanced ability to trade technological information is certainly consistent with the observation that transfers in patent rights became extensive during the period in which the substantial increase in specialization occurred.
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From page 36... ...
For example, even among patentees who did not assign their patents at issue, those in metropolitan centers had the greatest number of career patents and the longest careers at invention followed by those in counties with small cities and rural counties, respectively. Also relevant is the finding that patentees who were engaged in sectors with more complex technologies, like electrical/energy and civil engineering, where more substantial investments in technical knowledge would be required for effective invention, were more likely to sell their patent rights off at time of issue.
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From page 37... ...
The number of employment relationships between assignees and patentees was undoubtedly increasing during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, but the contractual mobility revealed by our examination of individual patentees over their careers suggests that productive inventors were still free agents for the most part. Rather, it appears that the growth of intensely competitive national product markets, coupled with the existence of the patent system, created a powerful incentive for firms to become more active participants in the market for technology.
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From page 38... ...
S Patent Office (1891)
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