Nazis™

Throughout our class, I have considered how IP law has and can be used to subjugate certain groups. From women being barred from registering patents to the use of IP to oppress African American and Indigenous groups, minority groups have often been strategically excluded from benefiting from IP laws.[1] Law, IP in particular, has often been considered sterile or removed from emotion, but studying the ways IP law has been utilized gives a glimpse into the culture and society of a time and place. A particularly interesting example of the power of IP being used for evil rather than good are the policies created by Nazi Germany to strip Jews of their IP holdings. In 1933, Jews were legally banned from holding positions at all German patent offices and filing or contesting patents. Laying this framework of exclusion allowed the Nazi party complete and virtually unopposed control over IP rights and aided the subsequent divesting of wealth and property from all Jewish citizens. The 1938 Decree for the Reporting of Jewish-Owned Property mandated Jews register their property worth more than 5,000 Reichsmarks with the state, this property was then ‘redistributed’ to either the government or non-Jewish citizens.[2] There has been minimal research on the way the patents and copyrights held by Jews and other ‘non-Aryans’ were treated before, during, and after the war. Patents and other for of IP were included in this theft, along with billions in financial holdings and physical goods, but little has been done to investigate and address the IP stolen.

After the war, all German-owned patents, trademarks, and copyrights granted by the Nazi party were seized by the Allied powers as a form of war reparations.[3] This bundle of intellectual properties, largely related to technology and scientific developments, very likely included certain properties which had been forcibly transferred to Germans from their original Jewish owners. Unfortunately, many records of Jewish IP were lost during the “patent office-less” period, spanning from the end of the war to 1949.[4] Contrary to popular belief, Nazi officials did not keep immaculate records, as by the end of the war many official documents were either lost or destroyed.[5] The German government has recently tasked the patent office with reviewing the available records to report on the treatment of Jewish property rights and the “aryanization” of IP under the third Reich. This report is also tasked with analyzing the actions taken after the war to reinstate patents to their rightful owners and compensate Jewish employees of the patent office who lost the right to work at the office under the exclusionary laws of Nazi Germany.[6] This investigation was only authorized last year, and it is certain that there is much to uncover about the Nazi’s use and exploitation of IP.

Though little is known (or at least publicly available) about the lasting impact of the forced transfer of IP from Jews to Aryan Germans, looking at some notable cases can provide a view of the lasting ramification of Nazi policies. Arthur Eichengrün, the inventor of acetylsalicylic acid was unable to object to Bayer’s patenting of his compound as Aspirin in 1934 because as a Jew, Eichengrün had been stripped of his patents and rights in the previous year.[7] Though Eichengrün’s claim as the originator of Aspirin is now accepted, no remedy or recognition of his claims was made before his death in 1949.[8] Similar to the story of Aspirin, the successful German brand “Tempo” which held the German trademark for paper tissues was owned by Jewish partners before being forcefully transferred to a supporter of the Nazi party.[9] Though the rightful owners survived the war, they never regained the rights to their trademarks and patents, despite appealing to post-war tribunals. The Jewish owners were given financial reparations in 1951, but the Tempo brand remained in the hands of the Nazi’s family until 1994 when it was sold to a Swedish conglomerate.[10]

In comparison to other actions of Nazi Germany, it has been easy to overlook the ways in which IP was used to persecute Jews living under the Nazi regime. Only recently has there been any considerable effort made to examine what IP rights were stolen, who received them, and what (if any) reparatory actions were made. The Nazi’s IP policies have lasting and profound impacts on the decedents of those whose IP was stolen from. Families that would have otherwise passed down patents and trademarks have been forced to watch those that oppressed them continue to profit off Jewish labor and ingenuity. The future results of the commissioned report may provide greater insight into the Nazis utilized IP, and could identify families who are owed reparations, but it seems unlikely that the properties would be returned to their rightful owners, actions that would have major impacts on business and economics in Europe.

Examples of companies that were built on antisemitism and war profiteering are not hard to come by, however, most of them have tried to erase any connection with the Nazis. Companies such as Porsche, Chanel, and Audi, who directly profited from the forceful striping of IP from Jewish owners/investors, all neglect to include this part of the brand’s history on their websites [11]. All three have dedicated history pages, that suspiciously skip from the mid-1930s to the mid-late 1940s. Other brands such as Hugo Boss and Volkswagen vaguely allude to the use of forced labor during this period but are far from explicit about their roles in manufacturing Nazi uniforms and machinery. I’m hopeful that the future report on IP during the war will create more public consciousness around the war crimes and history that many major brands have attempted to hide. We probably won’t see a remake of the Coco Chanel biopic where that features her years as an active spy for the Nazis, but perhaps there can be new progress in restitution and recognition of these heinous acts.

[1] K J Greene, “Intellectual Property at the Intersection of Race and Gender: Lady Sings the Blues” (2008) 16 Social Policy.

[2] Jörg Fisch, “Reparations and Intellectual Property” in Technology Transfer out of Germany after 1945 (Routledge, 1996).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Aufarbeitung der Geschichte des Reichspatentamts in der NS-Zeit und des Neubeginns in der Nachkriegszeit, by Bundesrepublik Deutschland, (Munich: German Patent and Trademark Office, 2022). Translated into English.

[5] Greene, supra note 1.

[6] Bundesrepublik Deutschland, supra note 4.

[7] Walter Sneader, “The discovery of aspirin: a reappraisal” (2000) 321:7276 BMJ 1591–1594.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Uwe Ritzer, “Eine deutsche Geschichte”, Süddeutsche.de (25 January 2019), online: <https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/tempo-eine-deutsche-geschichte-1.4303294>.

[10] Ibid.

[11] David de Jong, “How Porsche’s Jewish Cofounder Was Driven Out Of The Company By The Nazis”, Forbes (14 April 2022), online: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesdigitalcovers/2022/04/14/nazi-billionaires-book-excerpt-how-adolf-rosenberger-porsches-jewish-cofounder-was-driven-out-of-the-company-by-the-nazis/?sh=1d459897458e>.