ASLH/Business History Conference Anne Fleming Article Prize to Gerardo Con Díaz

Continuing our round-up of the prizes and award announced at the recent meeting of the American Society for Legal History, we turn now to the Anne Fleming Article Prize -- a prize that is particularly meaningful for us here at the blog. About the prize: 

The Anne Fleming Article Prize is a joint prize of the the ASLH and the Business History Conference (BHC). It is awarded every other year to the author or authors of the best article published in the previous two years in either Law and History Review or Enterprise and Society on the relation of law and business/economy in any region or historical period.

For a remembrance of our late colleague Anne Fleming, follow the link.

This year's award went to Gerardo Con Díaz (University of California, Davis) for “Patent Law and the Materiality of Inventions in the California Oil Industry: The Story of Halliburton v. Walker, 1935–1946,” Economy & Society 24.1 (2023): 174-96. The citation: 

Professor Diaz’s paper starts in 1941, when an independent engineer and inventor named Cranford Perry Walker decided to Mile a suit against Halliburton – not then the company it was to become – for patent infringement with regard to an instrument that Walker had devised and patented, christened the “Depthograph.” The Depthograph was designed to measure pressure and obstructions inside oil pipes and wells, providing vital knowledge to the booming oil industry. Walker was determined to defend his place in the market from the much larger competitor. Eventually the case went all the way to the Supreme court, where Waker was decisively defeated. From these seemingly obscure beginnings, Professor Diaz expertly unfolds a story with far-reaching implications for how intellectual property is understood and adjudicated in the US down to this day. We were unanimous in our decision. Deeply researched, beautifully crafted, and crisply written, this is an exemplary piece of scholarship in the art of bridging disciplinary divides between business and legal history.

An Honorable Mention went to Nora Slonimsky (Iona University) for “‘To Save the Benefit of the Act of Parliamt’: Mapping an Early American Copyright,” Law and History Review 40.4 (2022): 625-54.

Congratulations to Professor Con Díaz and Professor Slonimsky -- and may Anne's memory continue to be a blessing.

-- Karen Tani