ABSTRACT
German patents, was plundered by the Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee , whose job it was “to look into every segment of the German industrial landscape and obtain any information that might be of interest to American companies.”3 Every “segment” included3.5 billion pages of documents, 300,000 pounds of equipment and product samples, and 200 tons of other materials.4 Technically owned by the US Alien Property Custodian’s Offi ce , the patent booty was routinely passed through to the commercial marketplace for exploitation, potentially raking in billions of dollars for the new patent owners. John Gimbel ’s Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany puts the plunder-to-dollars conversion at a conservative $10 billion.
