Chapter 1 Expropriation of German Patents under the Treaty of Versailles

In: The Silent Peacemaker: Intellectual Property Rights and the Interwar International Legal Order, 1919–1939
Author:
Michael Blakeney
Search for other papers by Michael Blakeney in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
Type:
Chapter
Pages:
23–46
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004714663_003

Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

$40.00
Add to Cart
Redeem Access Token

Abstract

This chapter explores the origins of the international law on confiscation prior to the First World War. The international law concerning industrial property as embodied in the Paris Convention of 1883 is established as a benchmark for the protection of patent rights. The domestic laws enabling the confiscation of patents by the belligerent states is surveyed. The role of the Treaty of Versailles in approving the confiscations of the victorious Allies is described. The impact of patent confiscation in the Allied states is explored. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the international law dealing with the expropriation of industrial property rights after the First World War

  • Collapse
  • Expand
Series:  Legal History Library, Volume: 72/26 and  Studies in the History of International Law, Volume: 72/26
Cover The Silent Peacemaker: Intellectual Property Rights and the Interwar International Legal Order, 1919–1939
E-Book ISBN:
9789004714663
Publisher:
Brill | Nijhoff
Print Publication Date:
18 Nov 2024
Front Matter
The Interwar Peacemaking Epoch of International Intellectual Property (1919–1939): Ambiguities and Markets
Part 1 Versailles and Interwar Intellectual Property Relations
Part 2 Copyright Fascism, Plunder in Europe and American Trademark Markets
Part 3 The Interwar Global World of Intellectual Property Internationalism
Part 4 The Emergence of Performers’ Rights
Back Matter

  • Armstrong, John. War and Treaty Legislation: Affecting British Property in Germany and Austria, and Enemy Property in the United Kingdom (London: Hutchinson, 1922).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Beer, John. The Emergence of the German Dye Industry (Urbana: The University Illinois Press, 1959).

  • Ashish, and Rosenberg, Nathan, ‘Chemicals: A US Success Story’. In Chemicals and Long-Term Economic Growth: Insights from the Chemical Industry , eds. Arora, Ashish, Rosenberg, Nathan, and Landau, Ralph (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 1998).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Baten, Joerg, Bianchi, Nicola, and Moser, Petra, ‘Compulsory Licensing and Innovation – Historical Evidence From German Patents After wwi’. Journal of Development Economics 126 (2017) 231–242.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Boemeke, Mandfred, Feldman, Gerald, and Glaser, Elisabeth, eds., The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Boldrin, Michele, and Levine, David. Against Intellectual Monopoly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

  • Borchard, Edwin, ‘Enemy Private Property’. American Journal of International Law 18(3) (1924) 523–532.

  • Borchard, Edwin, ‘Nationalization of Enemy Patents’. American Journal of International Law 37(1) (1943) 92–97.

  • Caglioti, Daniela, ‘Property Rights in Time of War: Sequestration and Liquidation of Enemy Aliens’ Assets in Western Europe During the First World War’. Journal of Modern European History 12(4) (2014) 523–545.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Caglioti, Daniela, ‘Property Rights and Economic Nationalism’. International Encyclopaedia of the First World War ,2014, available at https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-property_rights_and_economic_nationalism-2014-10-08.pdf.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Caglioti, Danielia, and Brice, Catherine, ‘Property Rights in Wartime – Sequestration, Confiscation and Restitution in Twentieth-century Europe: Introduction’. European Review of History 28(2) (2021) 163–175.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Cassier, Maurice, ‘Patents and Public Health in France. Pharmaceutical Patent Law in-the-making at the Patent Office between the Two World Wars’. History and Technology: An International Journal 24(2) (2008) 135–151.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Cooper, Dale, ‘The Licensing of German Drug Patents Confiscated During World War i: Federal and Private Efforts to Maintain Control, Promote Production, and Protect Public Health’. Pharmacy in History 54(1) (2012) 3–32.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Duncan, Louise, ‘The Key Historical Influences Leading to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of 1883’. In Intellectual Property and the Law of Nations, 1860–1920 ,Morris, P. Sean, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2022).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gibson, William. Aliens and the Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940) 29.

  • Gross, D.A., ‘The US Confiscated Half a Billion Dollars in Private Property During wwi etc’. The Smithsonian, July 28, 2014.

  • Grotius, H. De iure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace) (1625).

  • Haber, Ludwig. The Chemical Industry During the Nineteenth Century: A Century of the Economic Aspects of Applied Chemistry in Europe and North America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Haber, Ludwig. The Chemical Industry, 1900–1930: International Growth and Technological Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

  • William. A Treatise on International Law, 7th ed., (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917).

  • Hamilton, Daniel. The Limits of Sovereignty Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy During the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Haynes, Williams. American Chemical Industry – The World WariPeriod: 1912–1922 (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1945).

  • Hounshell, David, and Smith, John. Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R and D, 1902–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Johnson, Philip, ‘Mr Patent Goes to War! Industrial Property and the Breakdown of the International Order during World War’. In Intellectual Property and the Law of Nations, 1860–1920, Morris, P. Sean, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2022).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Keynes, John (Maynard). The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: MacMillan, 1919).

  • Kristsiotis, Dino, ‘Fourteen Ways of Looking Back at the Treaty of Versailles’. London Review of International Law 8(1) (2020) 43–88.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Kudo, Akira, ‘Dominance Through Cooperation. i.g. Farben’s Japan Strategy’. In The German Chemical Industry in the Twentieth Century, ed. John Lesch (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000) 243–278.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Littauer, Rudolf, ‘Confiscation of the Property of Technical Enemies’. Yale Law Journal 52(4) (1943) 739–770.

  • Lubinski, Christina, Giacomin, Valeria, Schnitzer, Klara, ‘Countering Political Risk in Colonial India: German Multinationals and the Challenge of Internment (1914–1947)’. Harvard Business School, Working Paper 18-090 (Cambridge: Harvard, 2018).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McDermott, John, ‘Trading With the Enemy: British Business and the Law During the First World War’. Canadian Journal of History 32(2) (1997) 201–219.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York, Random House, 2002).

  • Maartensz, L., C. G. Alabaster, A. de Mello, and E. Koenig, “Review of Legislation, 1915, vi. Eastern Colonies”. Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation 17 (1917) 140–160.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Mann, Charles, and Plummer, Mark. The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1991).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Messimer, Dwight. The Merchant U-Boat: Adventures of the Deutschland, 1916–1918 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988).

  • Moore, John. International Law and Some Current Illusions: And Other Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1924).

  • Moser, Petra, and Voena, Alessandra, ‘Compulsory Licensing: Evidence from the Trading with the Enemy Act’. American Economic Review 102(1) (2012) 396–427.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Mulder, Nicholas, ‘“A Retrograde Tendency”: The Expropriation of German Property in the Versailles Treaty’. Journal of the History of International Law 22(4) (2020) 507–535.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Mulder, Nicholas, ‘The Trading with the Enemy Acts in the Age of Expropriation, 1914–49’. Journal of Global History 15(1) (2020) 81–99.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Quynn, Dorothy, ‘The Art Confiscations of the Napoleonic Wars’. American Historical Review 50(3) (1945) 437–460.

  • Ricketson, Sam. The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property: A Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  • Scott, Samuel, ed, ‘The Enactments of Justinian, The Digest or Pandects, Book xli’. In The Civil Law, Including the Twelve Tables, The Institutes of Gaius, The Rules of Ulpian, The Opinions of Paulus, The Enactments of Justinian, and the Constrictions of Leo, Vols 1–7 (New York: ams Press, 1973).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Shepley, Nick. Britain, France and Germany and the Treaty of Versailles: How the Allies Built a Flawed Peace, (2nd ed) (Luton: Andrews UK, 2011).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sommerich, Otto, ‘Recent Innovations in, Legal and Regulatory Concepts as to the Alien and His Property’. American Journal of International Law 37(1) (1943) 58–73.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Steen, Kathryn, ‘Patents, Patriotism, and “Skilled in the Art” USA v. The Chemical Foundation, Inc., 1923–1926’. Isis 92(1) (2001) 91–122.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Steen, Kathryn, ‘Confiscated Commerce: American Importers of German Synthetic Organic Chemicals, 1914–1929’. History and Technology: An International Journal 12(3) (1995) 261–284.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Turlington, Edgar, ‘Treatment of Enemy Private Property in the United States before the World War’. American Journal of International Law 22(2) (1928) 270–290.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Turlington, Edgar, ‘Vesting Orders under the First War Powers Act, 1941’. American Journal of International Law 36(3) (1942) 460–465.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • White, Michael, ‘US Alien Property Custodian Patent Documents: A Legacy Prior Art Collection From World War ii – Part 1. History’ . World Patent Information 29 (2007) 339–345.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Alien Property Custodian Report, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919.

  • ‘Enemy Interests in United Kingdom Patents’, Official Journal (Patents) , 13 November 1918.

  • ‘Patent and Patent Applications Vested in Public Trustee, Notice’ (1918) 101 Board of Trade Journal, 575.

  • Plunder And Restitution: Findings and Recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States and Staff Report, 2000, available at https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/pcha/PlunderRestitution.html/html/StaffChapter3.html, accessed 22 June 2023.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • US Alien Property Custodian, Patents at Work, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1943.

  • British Association of Glass Bottle Manufacturers Ld. v. Forster & Sons Ld. (1917) 34 rpc 217.

  • Dynamit Actien – Gesellschaft (Vormals Alfred Nobel & Co.) v. Rio Tinto Co., Ltd. [1918] ukhl 784.

  • Hirsch v Zinc Corporation Ltd (1917) 24 clr 34.

  • Hugh Stevenson &. Sons v. Aktiengesellschaft fuir Cartonnagen-industrie (H. L.) [1918] A. C. 239.

  • Mercedes Daimler Motor Company Ld v. Maudslay Motor Company Ld (1915) 32 rpc 149.

  • USA v. The Chemical Foundation, Inc. 272 US 1 (1925).

Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 106 106 51
Full Text Views 0 0 0
PDF Views & Downloads 2 2 1