Abstract

"Co-creation through Patent Disclosure: French Patents in Sweden, 1885–1914"

Matti La Mela, University of Uppsala (matti.lamela@abm.uu.se)

This paper studies how patent disclosure contributed to learning and invention by Swedish businesses during the Second industrial revolution. In the late 19th century, patenting became increasingly international as firms and inventors sought to protect their interests abroad (Khan 2013; Andersson & La Mela 2020). This development raised debates about how to balance between the potential barriers that the foreign patents could pose to national industries, against the benefits of learning and building upon foreign technologies disclosed through patents, which could lead to further invention in the domestic context.
This paper studies French patents filed in Sweden in 1885-1914, and examines how a semi-peripheral economy engaged with foreign technological knowledge through the patent system. It uses data from the Swedish Historical Patents Database and the INPI Historical archives. During this period, 38,200 patents were granted in Sweden, of which almost 60% were by foreign applicants (1,410 patents from France). The paper proceeds in two steps. First, it maps the flows of technology transfer by identifying who from France patented in Sweden, who acted as their agents, and in which sectors this activity was concentrated. Second, it analyzes the extent to which these patents stimulated invention by Swedish firms. Using methods for studying textual similarity (La Mela, Frankemölle & Tell 2025), the paper traces how the technical terms and concepts introduced through French patents reappeared in later Swedish patents.
The paper suggests that the disclosure function of patents facilitated invention and learning among local firms, a process of transnational co-creation through the public dimension of the patent system. The paper contributes to business and innovation history by examining Swedish-French commercial relations, and by studying how firms in small, open economies could benefit of information assymmetries through patents.