Office de Brevets
"Industrial Property", as such, appeared in France during the French Revolution. It was institutionalized by the law of 7 January 1791, which foresaw the creation of a bureau of "patentes". (The word is of minor linguistic note in that a few romance languages, among others, perhaps, have both words quite close to our "patent" and words fairly dissimilar.) The term was engaged in that age to designate what soon became known as "brevets". The word "patente" derives from the "lettres patentes" by which the king had given privileges to the old corporations. The law suggested having said patent bureau confided to the Baron Claude-Urbain Retz de Servières, director of the "société des inventions et découvertes". A law of 25 May 1791 completes the legislation delivering "brevets d'invention", which term then appeared. The patent administration is then put in place in less than two months, formally taking the form "Directoire des brevets", for which responsibility fell to the above-mentioned Baron de Servières.
Pertinent to us, the French patent office at the time of early aviation was the Office de Brevets, lasting as such from 1791-1900.
The immediate successor to the Office de Brevets was L'Office des brevets d'invention et des marques de fabrique, in 1900, renamed as the "Office national de la propriété industrielle", or "ONPI" en 1902. This was in turn succeeded by the INPI (France), in 1951.
Sources listing historic French aero patents include:
- INPI's advanced search online
- the USPTO's Subject-Matter Index
- CdB which seems to extend from 1879 to 1883.
- 1884-1889 is the period when this wiki has the least coverage. BOPI Tomes 1-10 should cover this period.
- 1890 is very light. BOPI Tomes should cover this.
- BOPI's Tome 11 has good coverage of 1891
- We have some patents from 1896, but not from BOPI
- 1899 has coverage from both BOPI and L'Aérophile
- espacenet really kicks in in 1901.
Some source info: Institut national de la propriété industrielle
Patent agents
Patents were generally submitted to the Office de Brevets by agents, with offices concentrated in Paris. Gabriel Galvez-Behar presents the following data regarding the growth and location of these offices:[1]
| Les cabinets d’agents de brevets en France | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1881 | 1989 | 1901 | 1911 | |
| Nombre de cabinets | 64 | 75 | 81 | 82 |
| Part des cabinets parisidens | 89 % | 85 % | 81 % | 100% |
| Part des cabinets parisidens installés dans le Xe arrondissement | 24,5 % | 34,5 % | 30,6 % | 20 % |
He also mentions a grouping in the IXe, Xe, and XIe, which in 1881 comprised more than half of the offices.
See Category:French patent agents
References
- ↑ Galvez-Behar, 2006, p. 442.
