History of patent law
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The history of patents and patent laws is generally considered to have started in Italy with a Venetian Statute of 1474. (Patents, however, existed before the law; the first known patent was actually issued by the Republic of Florence in 1421[1] and there is evidence suggesting that something like patents was used among some ancient Greek cities.[2]) The first patent law was a Venetian Statute of 1474 in which the Republic of Venice issued a decree by which new and inventive devices, once they had been put into practice, had to be communicated to the Republic in order to obtain legal protection against potential infringers. The period of protection was 10 years.
England followed with the Statute of Monopolies in 1623 under King James I of England [2]. Prior to this time, the crown issued letters patent providing any person with a "monopoly" to produce particular goods or provide particular services. The first such letter was granted by Henry VI in 1449 to a Flemish man a 20 year monopoly (co-incidentally, the current length of UK/EU patents is still 20 years) on the manufacture of stained glass (destined for Eton College).
This was the start of a long tradition by the English Crown of granting of "letters patent" (meaning 'open letter', as opposed to a letter under seal) which granted "monopolies" to favoured persons (or people who were prepared to pay for them).
This power, which was to raise money for the crown, was widely abused, as the Crown granted patents in respect of all sorts of common goods (salt, for example). Consequently, the Court began to limit the circumstances in which they could be granted. After public outcry, James I was forced to revoke all existing monopolies and declare that they were only to be used for 'projects of new invention'. This was incorporated into the Statute of Monopolies in which Parliament restricted the crown's power explicitly so that the King could only issue letters patent to the inventors or introducers of original inventions for a fixed number of years.
In the reign of Queen Anne (1702 - 1714) lawyers of the English Court developed the requirement that a written description of the invention must be submitted [3]. These developments, which were in place during the Colonial period in the U.S., were the foundation for patent law in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
In the United Kingdom, the Patents Act 1977 harmonised UK patent law with the European Patent Convention. Consequently, UK patent law is no longer based on the Statute of Monopolies, but an amalgam of UK and European practices.
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[edit] History of patents in the United States
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During the period of America’s Thirteen Colonies a few inventors were able to obtain monopolies (i.e. "patents") to produce and sell their inventions. These monopolies were granted by petition to a given colony’s legislature.
In 1646, for example, the Province of Massachusetts Bay granted inventor Joseph Jenks Sr. the exclusive right to set up water mills using a speedier engine he had developed for making edged tools, such as scythes. His monopoly was to run for 14 years. Reference
The Patent and Copyright Clause of the US Constitution was proposed in 1787 by JamesMadison and Charles Pickney. In Federalist #43, Madison wrote "[t]he utility of [the clause] will scarely be questioned. The copyright of authors has been solmnly adjudged, in Great Britain, to be a right of common law. The right to useful inventions seems with equal reason to belong to the inventors. The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of the individuals."
The Patent Commission of the U.S. was created in 1790. Its first three members were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.
The first patent was granted on July 30, 1790 to Samuel Hopkins of Philadelphia (sometimes confused with Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont) for a method of producing potash (potassium carbonate), an essential ingredient used in making soap, glass, and gunpowder (Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Scitech/invent/samhopkins.html).
The earliest patent law required that a working model of each invention be submitted with the application. Patent applications were examined to determine if an inventor was entitled to the grant of a patent. The requirement for a working model was eventually dropped. The 1986 revision of the Patent Law (35 U.S.C. Sec. 112) requires a written description. The Commissioner of the USPTO may ask for additional information, drawings, or diagrams if the description is not clear.
The Patent Law was revised in 1793. The rate of patent grants had grown to about 20 per year and the time burden on the Secretary of State was considered to be too burdensome. Patent applications were no longer examined. Patents were granted simply by submitting a written description an invention, a model of the invention, if appropriate, and paying a fee of $30 ($1000 in 2006 US dollars).
The Patent Board was replaced by a clerk in the Department of State. James Madison, Secretary of State, created a separate Patent Office within the State Department and he appointed Dr. William Thornton as its first superintendent in May 1802. On May 5, 1809 Mary Dixon Kies became the first woman to be awarded a U.S. patent. In 1810, the Patent Office moved from the Department of State to Blodgetts Hotel. In the same year, they opened the patent model storage to the general public. The Patent Office is now housed in its own building in Alexandria, Virginia.
The patent laws were again revised in 1836. The examination of patent applications was reinstituted. The number of patents granted per year had grown to about 700.
The first 10,000 patents issued by the USPTO from July 1790 to July 1836 were destroyed in a fire in December 1836. About 2800 of them were later recovered, but the majority of them are still missing. The recovered patents are now called X-Patents because their patent numbers end with an "X."
[edit] Notes
- ^ Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research, St. Martin's Press, 1996
- ^ Gregory A Stobbs, Software Patents, Aspen Publishers, 2000, ISBN 0-7355-1499-2, page 3. [1]
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Kenneth W. Dobyns, The Patent Office Pony; A History of the Early Patent Office, Sergeant Kirkland's Press 1994. [4]
[edit] External links
- First patents
American
- X Series : U.S. Patent X000001 "Improvements in making pot ash and pearle ash"
- 1st Numerical : U.S. Patent 0000001 "Traction Wheel"
- 1st Design : U.S. Patent D000001 Script font type
- 1st Reissued : U.S. Patent RE00001 "Grain Drill"
- Websites
