4 ms·

Whose patents did US flout?

shagie 7y ago
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-revolution-based-trade-secret-theft/id=85377/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-re... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-espionage-started-americas-cotton-revolution-180967608/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp... https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ (this one is specifically in context of China) This was before patents were well codified - instead it was trade secrets and guilds. It was still intellectual property theft.
- learc83 7y ago
  Slater was a British citizen who was prohibited by law from leaving Britain. He left under an assumed identity and set up shop in the US. This is not an example of the US engaging in industrial espionage or IP theft itself. We don't even know if Slater himself committed what we would call IP theft. From your first article: >Looking back, we can’t really conclude whether Samuel Slater’s actions would have qualified as trade secret misappropriation under modern laws. We don’t know, for example, how much of his work that first year resulted from his skills and general knowledge about the physics of spinning cotton and about pre-existing mechanical techniques. All of that was his to use freely. And we don’t know to what extent the success of his mills was due to improvements that he came up with on his own. There was a deputy treasury secretary who posted bounties looking for British cotton mill operators, but that seemingly never came of anything. That is better evidence of direct wrongdoing by the US. However, the US hadn't signed any treaties honoring British IP law yet and most European powers were doing the exact same thing at the time. >While the first U.S. patent act, in 1790, specified that "any person or persons" could file a patent, it was changed in 1793 to make clear that only U.S. citizens could claim U.S. patent protection. >China’s modern trade and patent regimes are similarly tilted against outsiders. The US in 1793 hadn't signed a treaty preventing them from limiting patent protection to US citizens. China has signed treaties promising to treat patent applications by petitioners from signatory states the same as domestic petitioners, and as your article points out they do not.

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-revolution-based-trade-secret-theft/id=85377/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-re... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-espionage-started-americas-cotton-revolution-180967608/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp... https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ (this one is specifically in context of China) This was before patents were well codified - instead it was trade secrets and guilds. It was still intellectual property theft.

learc83 7y ago
Slater was a British citizen who was prohibited by law from leaving Britain. He left under an assumed identity and set up shop in the US. This is not an example of the US engaging in industrial espionage or IP theft itself. We don't even know if Slater himself committed what we would call IP theft. From your first article: >Looking back, we can’t really conclude whether Samuel Slater’s actions would have qualified as trade secret misappropriation under modern laws. We don’t know, for example, how much of his work that first year resulted from his skills and general knowledge about the physics of spinning cotton and about pre-existing mechanical techniques. All of that was his to use freely. And we don’t know to what extent the success of his mills was due to improvements that he came up with on his own. There was a deputy treasury secretary who posted bounties looking for British cotton mill operators, but that seemingly never came of anything. That is better evidence of direct wrongdoing by the US. However, the US hadn't signed any treaties honoring British IP law yet and most European powers were doing the exact same thing at the time. >While the first U.S. patent act, in 1790, specified that "any person or persons" could file a patent, it was changed in 1793 to make clear that only U.S. citizens could claim U.S. patent protection. >China’s modern trade and patent regimes are similarly tilted against outsiders. The US in 1793 hadn't signed a treaty preventing them from limiting patent protection to US citizens. China has signed treaties promising to treat patent applications by petitioners from signatory states the same as domestic petitioners, and as your article points out they do not.