Intellectual Property Law

The electronic century

By Susan Crawford

In “Inventing the Electronic Century,” Alfred Chandler lists antitrust actions that opened up the data processing, consumer electronics, and telecommunications fields to U.S. and other competitors. Chandler’s text is dry and factual (and he is inordinately fond of the word “epic”), but he gets his points across:

1.  Consent decree with IBM in 1956 mandates the licensing of “existing and future patents” to any “person making written application.”  As a result, all the peripherals and other hardware created during the development of the System 360 become available to all manufacturers.  Epic.  Clones produced in huge numbers.

2. Threat of another antitrust suit against IBM in 1969 prompts the company to unbundle its packaged software for the System 360 and 370.  Epic.  Huge revenues for software companies between 1968 and 1980.

3. Consent decree with AT&T in 1956 mandates that the company stay out of the computing business.

Epic.

Full post as published by Susan Crawford Blog on April 26, 2010 (boomark / email).