AUMC Carl Benz Discussion

There are four main drivers of social innovation: (1) A voluntary exchange of ideas; (2) A shift in the roles and responsibilities of innovators; (3) Integrating private capital with public or philanthropic support to create a better world, and (4) Sharing intellectual property for the betterment of mankind. Discuss the following situation in terms of social or open-source innovation described in our textbook on pages 248-249 covering each of these four drivers:

Consider the automobile, one of the most innovative products ever developed. What if one person had a legal claim through a patent to the automobile, and any person or company that manufactured a version of an automobile could not legally do so without the patent owners permission? This was a true story 100 years ago! Conduct research to find out this background story, and discuss the implications of that scenario if it were still true using social or open-source innovation as described in our textbook. I will give you one clue: Henry Ford won a lawsuit related to this.