New book investigates origins of Swiss patent system

Unlike most other industrialized nations, Switzerland industrialized without a patent system. It wasn’t until 1887 that patents were introduced, voted on democratically, and 1888 that they took effect. This unique situation has made the small country of Switzerland an oft-cited example in economic books, but until now, there hasn’t been much published on the history of the system itself. This inspired Chachereau to write the book Les débuts du système suisse des brevets d’invention (1873-1914),available now in print, e-book, or as a free PDF download.

“Switzerland’s ability to industrialize without having its own patent system complicates the argument that you need patents to have innovation and you need innovation to have industry,” says Chachereau. “In the book I wanted to investigate: why did the Swiss introduce a patent system in the end, and once they did, who benefited?”

There are two arguments as to why Switzerland finally introduced a patent system. One camp is skeptical that patents encourage innovation, and posits that the country was pushed by foreign pressure. The other says on the contrary that Switzerland created a patent system out of self-interest. What Chachereau shows in the first part of his book is that neither explanation gets it quite right.

While there was foreign pressure, it was not actually very strong at that time. In fact, a lot of pressure was also coming from domestic sources, in the form of industries such as mechanical engineering and some textile products. It was the promoters of patents within Switzerland that were pushing the case using foreign allies. And although the proponents of a Swiss patent system believed that patents would be helpful for their business, Chachereau’s research shows that this was not necessarily the case.

In the second half of the book, Chachereau investigates the question of which industries actually benefited from the introduction of patents in Switzerland. What he found was that while certain industries, such as mechanical and electrical engineering, benefited from patents that helped them to take part in international cartels, other industries did not find patents as important. Watchmakers for example, who had initially been strongly in favor of patents, in the end were not helped much by them.

“You also have many individuals taking out patents for all sorts of consumer goods, such as umbrellas, pipes, all the stuff you would find in an 1870s bazaar,” Chachereau says. “But most often these people only took the patent for a year and then did not renew it.”

To Chachereau, this showed that for these smaller craftspeople, these patents were not lucrative nor necessary for innovation. There was the idea that patents were important for small entrepreneurs, but it turned out that they didn’t actually use the patents very much.

“Patents are maybe not one of the hottest topics, but every now and again, it is an important debate across society about whether we need them or not,” Chachereau says. One current example he gives is that of the Covid vaccine, which some lower income countries had difficulty acquiring and producing on their own due to patents on the vaccines.

“These older stories around patents complicate the narrative that we may have that patents are good or bad,” Chachereau adds. “They help us see that the question is not simply whether patents spur innovation, but also who gets what from them, as well as how they are managed.”