The UK patenting system is based on a concept of first inventor to file, similar to many other industrialized nations. The passage of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, signed into law on September 16, 2011, changed the US patent system from the concept of first and true inventor to a system based on first inventor to file. The central provisions of this law went into effect on March 16, 2013. This is a significant change in patent law that is introduced at a point in technological history where economies are shifting from industrial societies to quaternary information societies.

This book is an important academic work that objectively examines the patent system of the UK from the 1870s to the 1920s from a cross-national perspective. This time period encompasses the patenting of the telephone, the electric dynamo for power generation, wireless telegraphy, and the incandescent lamp. Social constructivism is used by the authors as a paradigm for their analysis. There are many parallels between the patent processes then and now in the UK and the US that are of keen interest to industry, government, and academia.

The work is organized into eight chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to patents and patentees; chapter 2 discusses the UK and the cross-national approach to patent management; and chapter 3 describes the roles of patent agents, litigators, judges, expert witnesses, professional societies, and the press in creating the true and first inventor persona. Chapters 4 to 7 provide case studies of the celebrated patent disputes of telephony, dynamo-electric machinery, wireless telegraphy, and the electric lamp industry. Chapter 8 draws well-documented conclusions, supported by an extensive notes section.

This is a well-written, important work that raises many contemporary intellectual property rights issues. There is an extensive potential audience for this book, as it applies to information technologies that have become the economic infrastructure internationally and the subject of important patent disputes.