Rethinking Patent Cultures

Patenting has become widespread in many countries and different areas of life since the industrial revolution, and especially since the rise of international businesses in the late nineteenth century. For example, between 1990 and 2003 the number of U.S. patents more than doubled from about 80,000 to 169,000 per year, and the increase is particularly significant in the biological sciences. However, while this high level of global activity has typically led scholars to assume that patenting has become simply one global phenomenon, it is clear from Gooday's recent research that patenting activity and attitudes towards it has varied between country, by industry and by community.

But how should we intepret this strikingly complex phenomenon? Has patenting been a natural and straightforward solution to problems of protecting innovation across many different areas in all countries? Evidently not, since many other kinds of intellectual property management ranging from trade secrecy to open knowledge sharing have also thrived over the last century. Moreover, not every country has embraced patent laws as a prerequisite of innovation - especially in Asian societies where ordinary individuals may not be able to own or monopolize creative ideas. Then again, where patent cultures have spread in industrial societies, it has sometimes been controversial: many countries long prohibited the patenting of medical products in order to maximize public access to healthcare. Strikingly, when patents have been taken up, it has not always been large businesses but sometimes by minority groups seek to protect their technological needs, most notably disabled people. So there is much scope for re-mapping the factors affecting who patents what and why - or indeed why not.

This research network proposes to explore the late nineteenth and twentieth century development of this phenomenon at a global level and on a national and local scale. It seeks to explore the subtleties of patenting activity within different countries and the economic, social and technological explanation for the development of particular attitudes towards patenting in these countries. The obvious current significance of patenting activity within biomedicine and bodily diversity in particular requires explanation; and accordingly the network will latterly focus on the history of patenting cultures in medicine and for disability appliances.

The project therefore seeks to analyse the roles played by government, industry, lawyers, inventors and scientists in innovation and patenting activity and the relationships between them. The network is particularly interested in the ways in which users of medical tools, pharmaceuticals, devices and appliances designed to assist those with disabilities shaped innovation and whether patents provided them with a method of subverting industry norms during the expansion of global capitalism. In addition to historians, this diverse range of stakeholders will therefore form a vital part of the network and will actively contribute to and shape the three planned workshops.

Three workshops will be held on each of the key areas and accompanying edited volumes (inter alia) produced as the main academic output. The first will focus on national locality and will examine different patenting cultures across the world; the second will examine patenting within medicine and will look at the relationship between patents, medical practitioners, scientists, industry and users; the third will concentrate on appliances for people with disabilities to examine the ways in which patents were used by inventors and users.

To ensure full public engagement this network's workshops will include representatives of business, healthcare, law and disability, with full social media reporting of project activities and outcomes, allied to public lectures and exhibits. Moreover, each of the project workshops will have a public event associated with it to maximize impact.

The network workshops will involve a wide range of external organisations and community groups to ensure that each such workshop will be attended not only by a mix of key international scholars, but also by key representatives from industry, law and community work.

The first workshop will be attended by members of the Business and Patent Information Service, Leeds Inventors' Group and representatives from the national solicitors firm Walker Morris, and the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys who specialise in the relevant area of Intellectual Property law; the second by medical instrument manufacturers affiliated with the Association of British Healthcare Industries (e.g. Leeds-based medical trade companies such as Medasil (Surgical) Ltd. and De Puy Synthes), and the third by representatives from Leeds Society for the Deaf and Blind, Seacroft Rehabilitation Centre, Tenfold, and the Physical and Sensory Impairment Network.

Invitations to participate will be sent to the regional community of scholars, business-people, researchers and other members of the public that attended recent public lectures on patents at Leeds by Christine MacLeod and Graeme Gooday. These were organized by the 'Ownership of Cultures/Cultures of Ownership' research theme co-managed by the PI: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/20045/leeds_humanities_research_institute/1777/projects/7

This project will also benefit from both the public engagement expertise and support offered by the Arts Engaged project at the University of Leeds, which was launched in December 2012 (see http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125100/arts_engaged ) and the University's Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, which was established in 2007 (see http://www.leeds.ac.uk/heritage/hpsmuseum ). The five recently-appointed Impact and Innovation Fellows, specifically Dr Jamie Stark as Fellow specialising in museum and galleries. Along with CoI (and Museum of HSTM Director) Dr Jones, Stark will help to realise project impact beyond the University by devising and implementing engagement activities with external partners and conducting project evaluation in the form of questionnaires following the three workshops, together with ongoing social media engagement.

In particular, Jones and Stark will use the collections within the University's HSTM Museum and the Thackray Museum at public lecture events linked to each workshop. Use of these collections will help to illustrate to non-academic audiences the manufacturing processes and underlying decision making over the patenting - or indeed often non-patenting - of various nineteenth and twentieth century technologies. A particular focus here will be the display of health and disability appliances from a variety of international locations, recently mapped by Co-I Jones in her forthcoming study on the history of the medical trade catalogue. While relevant objects will be drawn upon and displayed in each workshop, and associated public event, the project team of PI, Co-I and Stark will also launch an exhibition at the University of Leeds following the final workshop (September 2014), which will accompany dedicated webpages, a project blog and social media presence (from February 2014). Members of the local community with whom the two Museums have strong links will be invited to the exhibition launch and appropriate evaluation processes will be conducted among exhibition launch attendees by Co-I Jones and Stark.

All of the above events and activities will be disseminated through tweeting and blogging by the Co-I and others in the network as appropriate to ensure that audiences around the world not otherwise identified above, and in any sector of interest, can follow this project at their discretion. Moreover, by offering comments on project activity, such audiences can contribute to the shaping of post-workshop discussions, and thus to the moulding of the project outputs and to their later reception when published.