The Management of Intellectual Property at Home and Abroad: Babcock & Wilcox, 1850-1910

摘要

This paper deals with how an important nineteenth-century engineering firm, Babcock & Wilcox, managed intellectual property. Babcock & Wilcox produced a major breakthrough in steam boiler technology, which overcame serious problems of boiler safety. The technology became - and remains to this day - the dominant design in power generation processes. The paper therefore looks in detail at how Babcock & Wilcox used the patenting system. Patenting was seen as a key element both in creating the prime assets of the firm, and in protecting its competitive position. As a consequence, Babcock & Wilcox took out many patents and the paper tracks these for the period 1873-97. A general trajectory of patenting is uncovered, shifting over time from a focus on the prime products of the firm to production processes related to those products. This accords with recent theories of innovation dynamics, especially in the work of Abernathy and Utterback. Patenting policy affected not only major inventions, but also those that went through many modifications and incremental improvements. The firm was active in litigation and threats of litigation to enforce its patents. This firm saw its assets - both codified in its patents, and tacit in its capabilities - as central components of its competitiveness. So Babcock & Wilcox was by any standards a 'knowledge-based firm' in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and this raises questions about claims that the contemporary economy is in fact a new departure in terms of its reliance on knowledge as a key competitive resource of firms.