Ascertaining whether patents encourage invention necessitates understanding the incentives inventors respond to. The … British patent system prior to its reform in 1852 was cumbersome and expensive. Whether it facilitated or delayed the … Industrial Revolution is hotly debated. This paper's contribution is to examine the incentives to patent, and the characteristics …

period was characterized both by a self-aware culture of rapid technological innovation, and by a remarkably low propensity … to patent. Our study records how brewery innovators pursued a wide variety of highly distinct appropriability strategies …, including secrecy, selective revealing, patenting, and open innovation and knowledge-sharing for reputational reasons. All these …