German confederation

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Alex Donges is doing research to gather information on the estimated 20,000 patents from 1843 to 1877 issued by the German principalities. The first of a sequence of papers is available.

These German states agreed to share patent lists in 1842 at a conference. The purpose of sharing the lists was to prevent an invention to be copied and patented Here is a map of the German states at that time. Some are too small to see: Deutscher Bund.svg

Relatedly, see:

  • Alexander Donges; Jean-Marie A. Meier; Rui C. Silva„. August 2016. eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Donges.pdf The Impact of Institutions on Innovation]. at eh.net. From the abstract: The timing and geography of the French occupation of different regions of Germany after the French Revolution of 1789 was an exogenous shock to the institutions of those regions. The authors find that the German counties with the longest French occupation had twice as many patents per capita (circa 1900, I think) as the ones with the shortest occupation.