Re: Fw: Patents and War Reparations

"E.F.Schelby" <schelby@xxxxxxxx> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:tvejr11arlspt65j46k6apvm97rqg58n1k@xxxxxxxxxx
> Don Phillipson <dphillipson@xxxxxx> wrote:

> >2. Most valuable German-owned patents were been
> >licensed to Allied companies before WW2 began, e.g.
> >synthetic fuel (from coal) to ICI (UK) and Buna synthetic
> >rubber to Du Pont (Del.) The practical change effected
> >by war was that the licencees no longer had to pay
> >fees to the German patent owners: these rights were
> >sequestered as "enemy property" while producing
> >British and US companies proceeded as they wished.

> Microfilm teams fanned out across the land and filmed everything of
> value at industrial firms, research institutes, universities, and
> government agencies. This included patent applications, manuscripts,
> formulas and processes, techniques not generally known in the US
> etc, etc. Articles in the US press mentioned firms which were
> targets: Leitz, BMW, Agfa, Degussa, Merck, Krupp, Bosch, I.G.Farben,
> and on and on. At Leitz alone, 180.000 pages were filmed, at Degussa
> 14,000, at Krupp 60,000. The Berlin Patent Office topped them all
> by yielding over one million pages. Much of the information was made
> available almost free of cost to American business and industry.
> Special trade fairs and exhibits were organized across the US for
> the purpose.

Seems very fair, and perfectly standard practice.

Physical property owned both by an enemy state and by citizens of an enemy
state are automatically confiscated when a war begins, so it's no surprise
that the same happens to intellectual property. Nor did these practices
begin with WWII, nor end with it, nor do I believe that only the Allies
implemented them. Or did Germany pay patent rights to private (insert
attacked country's name here) companies? My bet is no, it didn't. So, as
always, Germany got no complaints coming, and talk about "plunder" is out of
place.

.

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