The Network on SSRN: Marketa Trimble, "The Patent System in Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia"

Network member Marketa Trimble (UNLV) has let us know that her book chapter, "The Patent System in Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia," is now posted on SSRN.  The chapter will appear in Intellectual Property in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (Mira T. Sundara Rajan, ed., LexisNexis forthcoming 2014).  The full article can be downloaded here and the abstract is below:

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The chapter analyzes patent law in Czechoslovakia in the period from 1945 until the end of communist rule in 1989. In addition to reviewing the legislative development of patent law – the laws on the books – the chapter explains the law in action, which includes the application of the law in practice and the attitudes of Czechoslovak society toward inventive activities and patenting. The chapter shows that post-1945 Czechoslovak patent law drew on a highly developed pre-1940 Czechoslovak patent law and practice that was based on the Austrian patent law inherited by Czechoslovakia in 1918 when it split from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although Czechoslovak patent experts after 1948 were under severe pressure to adopt the Soviet patent law model, it was not until 1972 that the Soviet model was fully imposed upon the Czechoslovak patent system. Notwithstanding the political distortions forced upon the Czechoslovak patent system in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s, the legacy of a high level of technical expertise developed under the Austro-Hungarian Empire survived in Czechoslovakia in large measure through the end of communist rule in 1989.