Trade Secrets

Abstract

This book focuses on intellectual piracy and presents an interpretive study of the American appropriation of forbidden European know-how from the perspective of a diplomatic historian of the early republic. The technology and the manner in which Americans acquired it came in three forms that were never quite independent of one another. First, there was the knowledge itself—the mechanical and scientific discoveries that made innovations possible. Second, there were the innovations that improved existing production processes and allowed for the creation of new products that were smuggled across the Atlantic Ocean. Third, and most important, were the workers who immigrated to North America, bringing with them the professional training they had acquired in Europe's factories. These three distinct historical phenomena constitute a unified problem from the perspective of the relations among states—namely, the rules and boundaries of national ownership of intellectual property on the international scene. The book focuses on the role policies relating to intellectual property played in promoting the appropriation of smuggled technology, which led to the emergence of the United States as the premier industrial power in the world. It discusses the evolution of the American approach to the problem of the relations between international boundaries and intellectual property from the colonial period to the age of Jackson, examines the role of federal and state governments in that transformation, and explains the contradictory American policy.

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