Overview

This book presents the legal and business history of corporate ownership of employee knowledge. Skilled workers of the early nineteenth century enjoyed a degree of professional independence because workplace knowledge and technical skill were their 'property,' or at least their attribute. In most sectors of today's economy, however, it is a foundational and widely accepted truth that businesses retain legal ownership of employee-generated intellectual property. In """"Working Knowledge"""", Catherine Fisk chronicles the legal and social transformations that led to the transfer of ownership of employee innovation from labor to management. This deeply contested development was won at the expense of workers' entrepreneurial independence and ultimately, Fisk argues, economic democracy. By reviewing judicial decisions and legal scholarship on all aspects of employee-generated intellectual property and combing the archives of major nineteenth-century intellectual property - producing companies - including DuPont, Rand McNally, and the American Tobacco Company - Fisk makes a highly technical area of law accessible to general readers while also addressing scholarly deficiencies in the histories of labor, intellectual property, and the business of technology.

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9780807833025

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Reviews

Fisk weaves together an exemplary narrative about the development of the modern American intellectual property regime...this masterful book is certain to remain the final word on this topic for a considerable amount of time.-- Essays in History

A detailed, thoughtful study that makes effective use of archival business histories to illustrate how a few of the more interesting and pioneering American firms help to not only shape workplace innovation but also ultimately manage and regulate that knowledge. . . . Highly recommended.--Choice

Very readable and well-organized . . . of great interest to those specializing in contemporary aspects of intellectual property and labor and employment law, as well as to historians of labor, business, and technology. <br>-- IP Law Book Review

This is a remarkable book, with a great deal of new information and a fresh perspective on the truly decentralized and diverse mechanisms that led to the corporate control of innovative activity we so often see today. <br>- Journal of American History

Author Information

CATHERINE L. FISK is Chancellor's Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine.

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