Rectenwald: The Trope of “the Poor Inventor” in the British Patent Debate (and Beyond)

A while back Michael Rectwald sent me this 2008 paper of his, “The Trope of “the Poor Inventor” in the British Patent Debate (and Beyond).” If I am not mistaken, this was written even before he was a libertarian. Impressive.

Abstract:

As recent scholarship on the history of invention has shown, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century inventor was proposed as a plausible new hero of the industrial revolution. But the inventor has also been characterized as a creature of accident—of risk, poverty, madness, and premature death. By the 1820s, inventors were not only heroes of industry; they became its victims as well—“poor inventors” who suffered under poverty and oppression to bring forth the works of the mind. The case of the poor inventor was introduced and championed by advocates of inventive workers from the 1820s until the 1840s; the figure came to stand emblematically for working-class interests at large. By 1850, however, the ideological and rhetorical construct of the poor inventor was appropriated by a liberal, mostly middle-class lobby to affect the first reform of patent law in modern British history.

As Michael commented to me, “It’s about the figure of the “poor inventor” and how it was mobilized to effect patent law “reform.” Note that my piece isn’t about IP per se. It focuses on the rhetoric used to maintain it as against the abolitionists of the period in Britain.”

For more on this issue, see my post “Intellectual Properganda.”

Too bad he was not the Libertarian Party’s nominee this year. He would have been the first Presidential candidate in history, to my knowledge, including previous LP candidates, to oppose IP. The current nominee, Chase Oliver, seems to have some good instinctual skepticism of IP but unfortunately no coherent or principled stand against it (see my tweet re same).