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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Previously Published Works Title Patent and Place: Intellectual Property and Site-Specificity Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8n67r12b Author Hindle, Richard L Publication Date 2016-03-21 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California forty-five.com / papers /139 Patent and Place: Intellectual Property and Site-Specificity Richard L Hindle Introduction Reviewed by Diana Balmori Among the more than 9 million U.S. patents granted since the Patent Act of 1790, a representational anomaly exists in which intellectual property and place converge in an evocative yet confounding hybrid at the interstices of technology and environment. For good reasons, known geographical locations are rarely represented in patent documents. The specificity of place precludes the widest interpretation of patent claims and is, therefore, generally omitted from texts and images that aim to protect the broadest interpretation of intellectual property. Besides, direct correlation between the configuration and function o f a n o v e l i n v e n t i o n a n d a s p e c i fi c l o c a t i o n , l a n d s c a p e, or environmental condition is atypical—obviously. Yet, the schism between patent and place is not absolute, and a unique subset of patents granted by the U.S. Patent and T r a d e m a r k O f fi c e ( U S P T O ) i n c l u d e s t e x t s a n d i m a g e stha suggest site specificity within intellectual property claims. Patent, Representation, and Environment Patents have operated as an invisible landscape-of-power in the built environment since the Italian Renaissance, w h e n t h e w o r l d ’ s fi r s t p a t e n t w a s i s s u e d t o t h e e minet architect Filippo Brunelleschi in 1421 for a “machine or ship” and method of transporting materials for his Duomo of Florence, establishing seminal legal and architectural precedents.1 Brunelleschi’s patent protected his invention of a new machine and method for transporting heavy loads by water, solving one of three major engineering problems associated with his novel dome construction processes.2 Although the patent’s legalese and the dome’s structure operated independently on discrete legal and structural principles, they formed together a highly interdependent and deterministic mechanism governing the form of the built environment. In this manner, the patent—western civilization’s oldest legal and institutional mechanism for i n c e n t i v i z e d i n n o v a t i o n — h a s l o n g m i r r o r e d , d e fi n e d , a n d shaped the built environment, yet failed to represent it eidetically in a way that is commonly recalled.3 Patents do parallel the built environment and design thinking. In his book The New Architecture and the Bauhaus ( 1 9 3 5 ) , t h e m o d e r n i s t a r c h i t e c t a n d t h e o r i s t W a l t e r Gropius foretold the transformation of architecture and design through industrial process, and, true to form, h e a n d h i s b u s i n e s s p a r t n e r K o n r a d W a c h s m a n n s e c u r e d a U.S. Patent for a “Prefabricated Building System” ( U S 2 3 5 5 1 9 2 ) i n 1 9 4 2 , a p p l y i n g B a u h a u s p r i n c i p l e s t o contemporary housing problems.4 Just a few years earlier, i n 1 9 3 8 , S t a n l e y H a r t W h i t e , a p r o f e s s o r o f l a n d s c a p e a r c h i t e c t u r e a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f I l l i n o i s , u n i fi e d n e w steel structural principles with advances in hydroponic technology to create a vertical garden model called the “Vegetation Bearing Architectonic Structure and System.” Correlating modern landscape theory to U.S. Patent claims, W h i t e ’ s i n v e n t i o n w a s a t r u l y m o d e r n a c c o m p l i s h m e n t i n forty-five.com / papers /139 the context of academic Beaux Arts.5 This coevolution of patent development and the built environment can also be traced through other complex infrastructural and natural systems, such as rivers, coasts, cities, buildings, and designed landscapes.6 A p a t e n t i s , i n e s s e n c e , a r e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f a s p e c i fi c invention. U.S. patents have been accompanied by models, drawings, and textual descriptions since the Patent Act of 1790, which established American patent law and pertinent representational standards.7 The Patent Act states that grantees shall deliver to the Secretary of State, Secretary o f W a r , a n d A t t o r n e y G e n e r a l “ a s p e c i fi c a t i o n i n w r i t i n g, containing a description, accompanied with drafts or m o d e l s , a n d e x p l a n a t i o n s a n d m o d e l s ( i f t h e n a t u r e o f t h e i n v e n t i o n o r d i s c o v e r y w i l l a d m i t o f a m o d e l ) o f t h e t h i n g or things, by him or them invented or discovered.” If the invention was found to be new and valuable by the cabinet secretaries and the Attorney General, the patent was granted and signed, bearing ultimately the “teste” of the President himself. In that manner, the government and inventors coevolved the technological substrate of “the arts” towards unforeseen ends. Patent law places no restriction on what may be invented or what might be deemed useful or valuable among the arts, opening up a world of possibilities limited only by the ingenuity of the citizenry and the representational standards of the patent, which today is global, territorial, nanoscale, atmospheric, and even a s t r o n o m i c a l i n r e a c h ( fi g u r e s 1 a - b ). Most patents related to landscapes, rivers, cities, regions, coastlines, and other complex environmental systems are intentionally site-less, distancing intellectual property c l a i m s f r o m a n y s p e c i fi c l o c a t i o n s . P a t e n t s o f t h i s s ort typically use diagrammatic or typological drawings to disclose inventions and protect the widest possible scope of intellectual property claims while maintaining ambiguity as t o w h e r e t h e p a t e n t m i g h t b e a p p l i e d ( fi g u r e s 2 a - f ) . T h o se drawings cover a range of design thinking and processes— describing workflows, evaluative methods, detailed material configurations, gadgets of one kind or another, and a dizzying array of objects—ultimately representing the environment as a series of typological conditions, tectonic assemblages, data sets, and operations often contingent o n s p e c i fi c s p a t i a l o r p h y s i c a l c o n d i t i o n s y e t , i n e s s enc, without specific sites. The siteless quality of environmental patent documents does not diminish their potential impact on large-scale complex systems. Consider, for example, the design and construction of Eads’ Jetties at the South Pass of the Mississippi River, near Fort Jackson, a patented system r e a l i z e d b e t w e e n 1 8 7 5 a n d 1 8 7 9 a n d c r e d i t e d w i t h saving the Port of New Orleans by sustaining commercial a c t i v i t i e s a l o n g t h e M i s s i s s i p p i ( fi g u r e s 3 a - c ) .