The FinFET Breakthrough and Networks of Innovation in the Semiconductor Industry, 1980-2005: Applying Digital Tools to the History of Technology.

The "FinFET" design for transistors, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1990s, represented a major leap forward in the semiconductor industry. Understanding its origins and importance requires deep knowledge of local factors, such as the relationships among the lab's principal investigators, students, staff, and the institution. It also requires understanding this lab within the broader network of relationships that comprise the semiconductor industry-a much more difficult task using traditional historical methods, due to the paucity of sources on industrial research.

Know-How in Postwar Business and Law.

In the mid-twentieth century, businesses around the world began to see technical know-how as one of the most important assets they could possess. While their exact definitions of know-how varied (usually centering on employees' tacit knowledge; accumulated, minor innovations rather than just patentable inventions; and tailoring to local conditions), the rapidly growing perception that it was invaluable led to widespread know-how licensing. As businesses embraced it, legal scholars and business lawyers during the 1950s through the 1970s scrambled to clarify legal bases for intellectual property protections for know-how.