{"id":876,"date":"2016-03-24T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/?p=876"},"modified":"2024-08-08T05:59:32","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T11:59:32","slug":"a-brief-history-of-patents-patent-law-past-and-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/a-brief-history-of-patents-patent-law-past-and-present\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brief History of Patents: Patent Law Past and Present"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The role and function of patents in the United States go right back to the original constitution and the thinkers who produced it. But the history of patents actually goes back much further than that, and U.S patent law followed in a tradition that was already centuries old. The Venetian Patent Statute (pictured above) goes all the way back to 1474 \u2014 the very period during which the capitalist system itself was emerging from the decline of feudalism. While patent law is always changing and evolving, the statutes laid out in that document nearly six centuries ago are today still the basic principles of patent law.<\/p>

The Venetian Patent Statute \u2014 1474<\/h3>

The oldest recorded document which specifies in broad terms a codified patent system, the Venetian Patent Statute established by the Republic of Venice was the first statutory patent system in Europe. The practice of patent rights certainly preceded the writing of this particular document, but what makes the Venetian Statute so interesting historically is that it represented the first time that patent customs were codified in a generally applicable, well-defined, and broad manner.<\/p>

Before the Venetian Patent Statute, patents were awarded on a case-by-case basis in response to individual requests for protection by petitioners. Ever since the Statue, though, the conditions specifying the rights of inventors to seek patent protection were well defined. They state that “any new and ingenious device, not previously made” which served some useful purpose was eligible for patent protection.<\/p>

This immediately recalls the current USPTO patent law<\/a> which requires that a patentable invention be novel and useful. Unlike contemporary patent law though, there was no cost for applying for protections under the Venetian Patent Statute. Between 1474 and 1788, some 2000 patents were granted by the Venetian Senate. To compare that with modern patents, the USPTO received 615,243 patent applications\u00a0just in 2014.<\/em><\/p>

The English Statute of Monopolies \u2014 1624<\/h3>

The first statutory patent system in England, the Statute of Monopolies was introduced in an attempt to curb abuses of the previously existing patent customs in England by the monarchy. Not wanting\u00a0to incur public displeasure by raising taxes, monarchs like Elizabeth I and James I abused the patent system to generate funds by extorting patent holders. Elizabeth I would even issue patents for common commodities like salt, and would then charge increasingly burdensome fees to patent holders. <\/p>

The Statute of Monopolies was eventually introduced to curb these monarchical abuses and take some of the authority for administering and granting patents out of the hands of the regents. As with Venice, prior to the Statute patents were granted by the rulers in accordance with custom and common law, without judicial review or oversight. Unlike modern patents (or like the earlier Venetian Statute), these patents were awarded not only for novel and useful inventions, but for all sorts of economic activity. In 1537, for example,\u00a0Antonio Guidotti was granted a 15 year patent giving him a monopoly on silk growing. <\/p>

Rather than being granted in recognition of Guidotti’s contribution of a new method of silk production as a modern patent might, this was rather an attempt to incentivize skilled craftspeople to move to the island by offering them monopolies in their field. Unlike the Venetian system, these patents could be extremely costly, and were preferred by the monarchy as a system of revenue generation. And so they were ripe for abuse. The terms of the monopolies granted by these patents grew longer and longer\u00a0and came to include such common and essential commodities as salt and starch.<\/p>

The Statute of Monopolies was eventually passed by the English parliament to curtail these abuses. First and foremost, it annulled all existing and future monopolies which had been granted under the previous system, declaring them “altogether contrary to the Laws<\/em> of this Realm, and so are and shall be utterly void<\/em>“. The Statute went on to list the conditions under which patent protections\u00a0could<\/em> be granted. Those conditions were:<\/p>