The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Democratization of Patent Agency

Resource type
Author/contributor
Title
The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Democratization of Patent Agency
Abstract
During the first Industrial Revolution, the patent system developed in an era of democratized invention. Individual inventors dominated patent filings and helped create a narrative surrounding the transformative impact of the patent system on the lives of inventors and society. Existing scholarship often overlooks the role of patent agents, those individuals who assisted inventors in securing patent rights, during this era. Industrial Revolution era patent agency was broad and indiscrete compared to its current form, which was largely a product of the needs of individual inventors and a pre-professionalization view of the discipline. As corporatization slowly replaced the individual inventor and professionalization began to dominate many occupational fields, the professional patent agent materialized. However, the emergence of disruptive technologies in our new Fourth Industrial Revolution may be reversing both of these trends, with the re-emergence of democratized invention and challenging the discretization of many fields of professional service.
Genre
SSRN Scholarly Paper
Archive ID
3200289
Place
Rochester, NY
Date
2018-06-21
Accessed
9/3/23, 8:16 PM
Language
en
Library Catalog
Social Science Research Network
Citation
Aoun, W. (2018). The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Democratization of Patent Agency (SSRN Scholarly Paper 3200289). https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3200289
Author / Editor