44
See Upham 2000.
45
Glasgow 1999.
46
Blackbourn 1997, p. 384.
47
Clark 1996, p. 54.
48
See Aron 2000, table 1, for some examples.
49
De Soto 2000; Upham 2000.
50
E.g., McLeod 1988.
51
Penrose 1951, p. 13; Doi 1980 (for Japan).
52
I put quotation marks around the term ‘deficient’, because what is deficient at least partly depends on one’s viewpoint. For example, some people believe that product patents on chemical and pharmaceutical substances should not be allowed, while others argue that they are desirable.
53
According to Cochran and Miller (1942, p. 14), therefore, the fact that between 1820 and 1830 the USA produced 535 patents per year against 145 for Great Britain was mainly due to the difference in ‘scruples’. Contrast this with the argument by Sokoloff and Khan that it was thanks to a ‘good’ patent system that by 1810 the USA far exceeded Britain in patenting per capita (2000, p. 5).
54
Chemical substances remained unpatentable until 1967 in West Germany, 1968 in the Nordic countries, 1976 in Japan, 1978 in Switzerland, and 1992.in Spain. Pharmaceutical products remained unpatentable until 1967 in West Germany and France, 1979 in Italy, and 1992 in Spain. Pharmaceutical products were also unpatentable in Canada into the 1990s. For details, see Patel 1989, p. 980.
55
See Schiff 1971, for further details.
56
The 1817 Dutch patent law did not require a disclosure of the details of patents. It allowed the patenting of imported inventions. It nullified national patents of inventions that acquired foreign patents. And there was no penalty on others using patented products without permission as far as it was for their own business (Schiff 1971, pp. 19-20).
57
Machlup and Penrose 1950; Penrose 1951.
58
Schiff 1971, p. 85.
59
Schiff 1971; Patel 1989, p. 980.
60
See Chang 200la, for further details.
61
Shell 1998; Chang 200la.
62
Gillman and Eade 1995.
63
However, Kindleberger argues that the Bubble Act was ‘a device to save the South Sea Company by halting the diversion of cash subscriptions to rival promotions, not an attack on it’ (1984, p. 70), as I suggest here. Whatever the motive was behind the Act, the fact that it survived for a century implies that the view that limited liability promotes speculation, whether true or false, was widely accepted.
64
Rosenberg and Birdzell 1986; Chang 2000.
65
