The article presents a novel method that enables the formation of historical patent families. Patent families are useful for studying the value of inventions and identifying key technologies, as they indicate geographic diffusion and higher patenting costs. The concept of patent family has not been employed in historical contexts as historical sources generally lack information about priority rights. The article provides a definition of a historical patent family, where patent families incorporate patents with the same invention core. The method is applied and evaluated by constructing Swedish patent families in 1885–1914 with historical patent data from Finland and the United States. Moreover, the article introduces the Patent Diffusion Index (PDI), which is an indicator of historical patent families which can be used to study the sequence and pace of market entry. The article exemplifies how historical patent families open novel perspectives on patent value and technology diffusion in contrast to current indicators, such as patent fees, which usually are bound to national contexts. The method is applicable to any national patent data, and patent drawings are suggested as an effective way to form historical patent families.

This paper studies how investments in design affect the market value of firms, using European RegisteredCommunity Designs and national Swedish design rights data combined with R&D, patent and trademark data,for the period 2003–2013. This paper is the first large-scale quantitative study using industrial designs rightsto measure design. Nonlinear least-squares regressions are used to investigate the association between thesevariables and the market value of Swedish firms. The results show that industrial designs rights have a positiveand significant relationship to the market value of firms. It provides both new evidence on the effect ofindustrial design rights on the market value of firms and internationally comparable results for other intangibleassets such as patents, trademarks and R&D. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the understanding of designknowledge and the valuation of design rights.

We exploit exogenous variation arising from the historical rollout of the Swedish railroad network across municipalities to identify the impacts of lowered interaction costs on innovative activity. A network connection led to a surge in local innovation due to an increased entry, productivity, and specialization of independent inventors. As the railroad network expanded, it further led to the emergence of a national market for ideas: inventors in connected areas began to develop ideas with applications outside the local economy, which were subsequently sold to firms along the network. Our findings suggest that the reduced interaction cost between firms, intermediaries, and inventors was a key driver of the historical emergence of a market for ideas.

The article analyses Swedish and Finnish patent agents and their businesses at the turn of the twentieth century. Due to legal requirements, all foreign patent applications had to pass through the hands of patent agents. Despite the central role, this transnational business of technology intermediation has received only limited attention in the scholarship. The article studies the business relationships between the patent agents and their clients, and employs new datasets, which include information about all foreign patentees using a patent agent in 1860–1910. The main findings are that the transnational business relationships affected the specialisation of national patent agents, especially in Finland, where patent agents with a legal background contributed to the inflow of inventions managed by Swedish patent agents. Patent agent services also represented significant indirect costs of the patent systems for their foreign clients.