Research
INNOVENTING Brussels explores whether historical Belgian patents (1830–1945) contain “forgotten” inventions that can be updated to respond to today’s challenges in the Brussels-Capital Region (climate and energy, resource optimisation, mobility, inclusive society).
While patents are a recognised source for studying innovation, Belgian research has focused almost exclusively on recent patents, because around 800,000 national patents filed before the mid-1970s are neither digitised nor classified under the International Patent Classification (IPC). As a result, this vast technological heritage remains practically invisible.
Building on the BrIDGING Patents initiative between ULB/JurisLab and the Belgian State Archives, the project will be the first to exploit a newly digitised corpus of 19th- and early-20th-century Belgian patents. The main research question is: can poorly commercialised inventions of the past become innovations once reinterpreted in light of current technologies and urban needs? Belgium is an excellent test case: it was an early industrialised country, had one of Europe’s highest patenting rates, and many of its inventions concerned infrastructure that still shapes Brussels today.
The project combines legal history, data science, AI and urban studies. WP1 will build an SQL database of Belgian patents, manually structure key fields (inventor, title, date, sector) and then use large language models to create search labels comparable to modern IPC codes; USET will validate the labels for domains relevant to Brussels. WP2 will return to the archival files, link them to foreign patents and technical literature, and select inventions that can realistically be updated into present-day technical or societal innovations. The outcome will be a “research roadmap” for Brussels and concrete demonstrators, prepared with OpenLab and FabLab.
Biography
Frédéric Marteau holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and an MA in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology from the Université de Lorraine. Originally trained as an engineer at the École polytechnique de Bruxelles, he spent twenty years in the field of patent law, first as a patent engineer in a private practice and later at the European Patent Office. He joined ULB to bring together his expertise in patent law, technology and the history of science, with a particular interest in how past inventions can inform present-day innovation.