1. Institutions and Agents of Technological Diffusion in 19th Century Spain
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Date:
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2011-09
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By:
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Pretel, David (Trinity Hall. University of Cambridge)
Saiz, Patricio (Departamento de Análisis Económico (Teoría e Historia Económica). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) |
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URL:
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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 peripher y 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.
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Keywords:
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agency, agents, patents, technology transfer.
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JEL:
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N73
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