Know-How in Postwar Business and Law

Abstract

In the mid-twentieth century, businesses around the world began to see technical know-how as one of the most important assets they could possess. While their exact definitions of know-how varied (usually centering on employees' tacit knowledge; accumulated, minor innovations rather than just patentable inventions; and tailoring to local conditions), the rapidly growing perception that it was invaluable led to widespread know-how licensing. As businesses embraced it, legal scholars and business lawyers during the 1950s through the 1970s scrambled to clarify legal bases for intellectual property protections for know-how. In the 1970s Supreme Court decisions undermined this effort, and a consortium of legal organizations turned instead to lobbying for statutory protection for the related, narrower category of "trade secrets." Despite the rise and relative decline of know-how in American business and law, interest in the term spread to other languages and legal systems, and the repercussions of these shifting understandings of technology transfer remain with us today.

Compromised Agency: The Case of BabyLegs

“…Initially, the impetus for establishing private scientific property was a way to support scientific communities that had been devastated during the First World War and attendant economic crises (Miller 2008), though privatizing intellectual products predates scientific IP (O'Reagan 2017;Kranakis 2007;Lubar 1991). Patenting is a legal grant for the creator of an invention or process to solely make, use, and sell that invention.…”

In the service of secrecy: An enveloped history of priority, proof and patents

“…Secrecy and disclosure may be cornerstone categories of the intellectual property system but, as such, they are less like monoliths and more like entryways. As 'manifestations of proprietary attitudes toward knowledge' (Long, 2001: 89), traditional outlets such as publications and patenting have continually co-existed with features of non-disclosure, be it the shape of sealed notes, trade secrets (Bambauer, 2016) or know-how (O'Reagan, 2017). Further inspiration comes from understanding these manifestations as dependent on documents and paper materialities in bureaucracies, administrative work that tends to be obscured or even rendered invisible.…”