The Battle for Control of the Brass and Instruments Business in the French Industrial Revolution narrates and analyzes the largest judicial battle in culture and industrial property in nineteenth century Europe, the echoes of which still ring today.

The battle was about simple wind instruments made of brass and their related patents, not by opera - the musical genre that moved the most money and people at the time - or the revered and contentious high art. Music, in all its dimensions, had be...