The Gutenberg Press: IP considerations from a modern perspective

The Guttenberg Museum, Mainz

On a rainy day in Mainz this summer, I took the opportunity for some shelter in a museum.? The Gutenberg Museum peeked my curiosity -? I had not associated Gutenberg and his invention of printing with Mainz.? Despite being on holiday, I noted Gutenberg’s? work has parallels to modern technical development and commercialisation[1].? I found the experience all the more relevant for me considering my past work for a company that makes one of the world’s most advanced lithographic printing systems for manufacturing silicon chips, ultimately derived from Gutenberg’s work. ??

Gutenberg’s press and printing process was one of the most revolutionary inventions of the late middle ages.? Around 1455 Gutenberg printed about one hundred and eighty Bibles in the time it would have taken to write a few copies. ?Within a few years the invention increased the number of books in circulation in Europe from about forty thousand to more than million.? By 1470, a printer had been established business in every major European city, so ?by the 1500s four?million?books had been printed and sold. ?Gutenberg’s printing technology fulfilled a long sought need to accelerate how ideas could be quickly and clearly communicated and to increase the availability of the written word throughout society.? The increased availability of printed text enabled many far reaching changes that have happened since the mid-fifteenth century such as the Reformation, the Renaissance and ultimately the development of the modern world.??

Gutenberg is accredited as the inventor of moveable typeface for printing books which he demonstrated by printing of the Bible.? Yet moveable typeface was first developed in China? nearly five hundred years earlier.? The use of metal instead of wooden characters was developed in Korea about a century before Gutenberg.? The Korean and Japanese technologies are believed to have been unknown in in fifteenth century Europe.? However, these prior existing activities, by modern legal standards of patentability, would be considered to be ‘prior art’: publicly available knowledge through written text or use, anywhere in the world.

Applying modern standards for assessing patentability,? what did Guttenberg really invent? ?Would he be considered to correctly attributed as a sole inventor?

Relative to the ‘prior art’ ?the key new and inventive features under a modern assessment appear to include:

1)?????? ?the method of quick, mass manufacture of a metal character such as a letter from a unique matrix;

2)?????? a suitable type of paper for printing with a hydrophobic coating that holds the ink to its surface while drying, rather than blotting; and

3)?????? a printing press that applied an even pressure over the full area of the paper necessary for a book (i.e. twice the size of a page for book) for an even print. (Gutenberg’s printing press is based on the traditional wine press that was ubiquitous in the vineyards and wine cellars along the Rhine near Mainz).

Many of the other key features, that are commonly attributed to Guttenberg, appear to have been present and used in printing techniques developed earlier in east Asia.? By modern standards of assessment, these features would not have been patentable.

Many small cumulative improvements made by Gutenberg relate to the distribution of the printed letters on the page so the printed material mimicked written text.? For example, he made different versions of the same letter so that he could adjust the typeface.? This meant that each line of text could be set to the same length across the page (i.e. a ‘justified’ alignment[2]) – just as in a traditionally written book.? Achieving the familiarity of a written book with consistency is likely to have been a key to Guttenberg’s success:? he worked hard to ensure his product looked and felt to the user just as if it was made by the then existing technology. ?The text could even have be illustrated with coloured calligraphy after printing to complete the feeling of authenticity.?

Modern tech entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs ensured that the user interface of a personal computer, and later a tablet, provided a user experience that had the look and feel of printed material – a product made by the then established technology.?? The success of adoption of computers can in part be attributed to efforts of the likes of Jobs.? It appears ?Gutenberg foreshadowed Jobs’s approach.? It may seem ironic that Jobs’s success was enabled by authentic replication ?of the user experience of technology (i.e. printed text) that successfully imitated the look and feel of a written book of the fifteenth century. ?

Modern parallels of entrepreneurship and innovation do not end there.?

In a similar manner to Henry Ford, Gutenberg divided tasks between workers so they worked on a limited number of operations, or even one.? Guttenberg industrialised his workshop; so he was not working alone. ??He had a team of about twenty people a number ?of whom are now recognised as leading the development of some of the inventive concepts of Guttenberg’s process.? By today’s legal standards,? Guttenberg would not be recognised as the sole and true inventor of all the inventions commonly attributed to him.??

Gutenberg is recognised today as coming from a well-recognised established family of Mainz, ?a ‘patrician’ family of the city.? He had access to financial means, personally owning several properties in and around the city, and suitable contacts to secure financial partners and investors.? He was sufficiently wealthy that he operated as an entrepreneur.? ?Arguably his manner of achievement was akin to Elon Musk today:? bringing unheard of technology to the market through self-funding and collaboration. ?

It should not be a surprise,? as past business practice shadows that of the present, that he had a commercial dispute with his main business partner, Johann Fust.? It related to a poorly drafted legal agreement – it always pays to have a properly drafted commercial agreement.? The contract was about a payment between them which they each understood differently: the payment was either a loan for repayment or an investment (i.e. shares) in which they shared the commercial risk.?? Resolution led to them to part ways and apportion their assets, depriving Guttenberg of the printing presses and thus the means to continue printing in Mainz; although he later set up another workshop and is believed to have undertaken new work.? May be if the modern patent system had existed at that time they would have additional assets to apportion their business more equitably??

Yet without the existence of patents,? the printing techniques attributed to Guttenberg propagated throughout Europe enabling our modern world develop. ?The rapid growth of printing was aided yet further by civil unrest in Mainz in 1462, causing apprentices from printing workshops in Mainz to leave, taking their knowledge with them.? So much for modern standards of confidentiality and trade secrets.? There are of course limitations to how far drawing parallels from history can be drawn.

Distributing and communicating information would not be achieved in the same way but for Gutenberg’s contribution for printed text – a technique first developed for replicating the look and feel of handwritten religious text nearly six hundred years ago. Despite the large difference in time, during which much has changed, it is curious to see how much we still rely on Gutenberg’s contribution to technology to this day and how strongly parallels exist in the development and commercialisation of inventions then as now. ?On reflection,? I find this quite an unexpected insight from some shelter from when I only wanted to avoid a wet and rainy morning on the streets of Mainz.

[1] It was a very good busman’s holiday:? a holiday doing something similar to your usual work

[2] Typographic alignment - Wikipedia