Patently Contestable ― Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain

Late nineteenth-century Britain saw an extraordinary surge in patent disputes overthe new technologies of electrical power, lighting, telephony, and radio. These battles played outin 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 cultureschanged from the 1870s to the 1920s. They consider how patent rights came to be so widely disputedand how the identification of apparently solo heroic inventors was the contingent outcome of patentlitigation. Furthermore, they point out potential parallels between the British experience ofallegedly patentee-friendly legislation introduced in 1883 and a similar potentially empoweringshift in American patent policy in 2011. After explaining the trajectory of an invention fromlaboratory to Patent Office to the court and the key role of patent agents, Arapostathis and Goodayoffer four case studies of patent-centered disputes in Britain. These include the mostlyunsuccessful 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.