------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (June 2006)  
  
B. Zorina Khan, _The Democratization of Invention: Patents and   
Copyrights in American Economic Development, 1790-1920_. New York:   
Cambridge University Press, 2005. ix + 322 pp. $60 (cloth), ISBN:   
0-521-81135-X.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by Robert A. Margo, Department of Economics,   
Boston University.  
  
  
If one had to list the top five issues in economic history, technical   
change would surely be among them. Institutions and institutional   
change, of course, would also be on the list. But the connection   
between the two -- institutions and technical change -- is certainly   
understudied by cliometricians. Zorina Khan's new book is meant to   
help remedy this situation by focusing on the role of intellectual   
property institutions -- patents and copyrights -- in technical   
progress in nineteenth-century America. (Khan is an associate   
professor of economics at Bowdoin College, and a Research Associate   
of the National Bureau of Economic Research.)  
  
_Democratization_ is divided into ten chapters and an index (there is   
no separate bibliography). After an introduction that sets the stage   
and makes a case for the use of patent statistics and related data,   
chapter two surveys the legal history of patent systems in France,   
England, and the United States. In comparison with France, the   
American system was less arbitrary; in comparison with England, it   
was far less costly, opening up the possibility of ordinary Americans   
obtaining a patent.  
  
Chapter three examines outcomes in the universe of reported cases of   
patent litigation before the Civil War. Khan's analysis reveals,   
among other results, that the shift in 1836 to patent examinations   
(in the application/granting process) was associated with an increase   
in favorable outcomes for plaintiffs, which Khan (p. 99) attributes   
to the greater likelihood that the "Patent Office would ... filter   
out those claims that failed to meet the standards for novelty"   
thereby altering the set of cases that went to trial. Chapter four   
studies another novel data set on antebellum patentees. Over time,   
patenting per capita increased, not because of a greater likelihood   
of invention among a small, core elite, but rather an increase in the   
proportion of individuals who patented. Patenting was also correlated   
with various features of local economies that suggest a role for   
market expansion, such as urbanization or access to transportation   
networks.  
  
Chapters five and six switch gears, focusing on female patentees.   
Khan argues that women's role in technical change has been slighted   
in favor of other topics (such as labor force participation).   
Although women were far less likely to be patentees than men, there   
was growth over time -- indeed more rapid growth among women later in   
the century -- and certain patterns suggest responsiveness to market   
signals. In Chapter six, Khan uses a data set on married women's   
property laws to test whether the passage of such laws -- a form of   
economic emancipation -- raised the probability that women would   
engage in patenting. Chapter seven returns to the basic theme,   
showing that "great inventors" of the nineteenth century were also,   
in many ways, not very distinguishable from ordinary Americans.  
  
To this reviewer, Chapters eight and nine are perhaps the most   
interesting in the book. Chapter eight, sort of a reprise of chapter   
two, elucidates the history of copyright in the United States against   
a European background. By comparison, American copyright emphasized   
widespread access to intellectual output whereas the European model   
(that is, the French) imagined that authors had natural rights to   
their work. Chapter nine is an entertaining analysis of the American   
refusal, until late in the nineteenth century, to extend copyright   
protection to "foreign" authors. Using a variety of data including a   
sample of book prices, Khan investigates various assertions in the   
literature -- for example, that the policy permitted book publishers   
to charge lower prices for foreign authors (apparently not). Chapter   
ten summarizes the central findings and also further explores   
variations in patent systems across countries and economic outcomes.  
  
_Democratization_ has many virtues. The general topic is, without   
question, of first-order importance. Above all, the book is very   
well-written. It is obvious from the beginning that Khan has an   
erudite command of the relevant literature and historical sources,   
both American and European, a command that is especially evident in   
the copious and detailed footnotes. She has a flair for telling   
anecdotes, written and visual, that personalize the hard numbers. The   
quantitative data examined in the book are fresh and quite varied. By   
and large, cliometricians have paid relatively little attention to   
historical data on legal outcomes. In this regard, the analysis of   
patent litigation in Chapter three may prove useful as a blueprint in   
other contexts.  
  
Virtues aside, however, I found myself flagging about halfway through   
largely because the book's mantra -- that America possessed a patent   
system that was, by world standards, egalitarian -- does not seem   
particularly surprising and, at the very least, is of debatable   
economic significance. The two chapters on women, frankly, could   
easily have fit into one, much briefer chapter that would have better   
kept this reader's attention.  
  
For a book that is quite self-consciously "cliometric" -- there are   
37 tables and 20 figures -- the cliometrics on display do not go far   
enough, at least for my tastes. Hypotheses to be tested are not   
derived from formal models but rather from the prior literature and,   
consequently, the connection to the empirical work can seem vague   
(as, for example, in the claim mentioned at various points that the   
preponderance of ordinary Americans among patentees sheds useful   
light on Joel Mokyr's well-known distinction between macro- and   
micro-inventions). The many regressions are descriptive exercises --   
multivariate versions of (the many) two-way tables, if you will. As   
such, the coefficients are subject to multiple interpretations that   
are not always considered in sufficient detail to convince a   
skeptical reader of Khan's preferred spin. For example, in her   
econometric analysis of patent specialization (Table 4.3), Khan draws   
on previous work by Kenneth Sokoloff (_Journal of Economic History_   
1988) to give a plausible explanation of the negative coefficient of   
the presence of a navigable waterway. The "average patentee," we are   
told (p. 121), "became less specialized when water transportation   
became available, but ... this change was reversed over time as   
urbanization ... progressed." This may be true, but it imposes a   
dynamic interpretation on an econometric specification that is not   
designed for this purpose. In another example, Table 6.4 reports   
regressions that claim to show that states that passed married   
women's property laws experienced increases in female patenting that   
were statistically and economically (given the low base) significant.   
This, too, may be true but, as best as I can tell, the econometric   
analysis is not true difference-in-difference, and potential   
endogeneity issues regarding the laws do not seem to be fully   
explored.  
  
Criticisms aside, _Democratization_ is an important book on a subject   
-- the economic history of intellectual property -- that heretofore   
has received insufficient attention from economic historians. The   
book's style of argument emphasizing a wide array of sources will   
appeal to a much broader audience than is usually the case with   
monographs in economic history. And it will be a very good thing if   
Khan's quantitative work with historical legal documents stimulates   
others to follow suit.  
  
  
Robert A. Margo is Professor of Economics and African-American   
Studies, Boston University; and Research Associate, National Bureau   
of Economic Research. He is the editor of _Explorations in Economic   
History_.  
  
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