Biography
INNOVENTION Brussels explores whether historical Belgian patents (1830–1945) contain “forgotten” inventions that can be updated to respond to today’s challenges of the Brussels-Capital Region (climate & energy, resource optimisation, mobility, inclusive society). While patents are a recognised source for studying innovation, Belgian research has focused almost only on recent patents, because around 800,000 national patents filed before the mid-1970s are neither digitised nor classified under the international patent classification. As a result, this large technological heritage is 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–early 20th century Belgian patents. The main research question is: can poorly commercialised inventions of the past become innovations once reinterpreted with current technologies and urban needs? Belgium is an excellent test case: it was an early industrial country, had one of Europe’s highest patenting rates, and many inventions concerned infrastructures that still shape Brussels.
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 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.
Expected impacts are threefold:
opening and FAIR-making a unique Belgian patent corpus for historians, lawyers, economists and innovation scholars;
proposing a transferable method of “innovention” (re-mobilising past inventions for sustainable, socially inclusive innovation, in line with exnovation and X-innovation debates);
strengthening the fellow’s career by adding AI, database and innovation-policy skills to his 18-year patent-law and EPO experience, and reinforcing ULB’s capacity at the interface of IP, digital humanities and urban innovation.