Statute of Monopolies 1623
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England's Statute of Monopolies of 1623 (21 Jac. 1, c.3), while generally condemning monopolies, provided the true and first inventor of a given item up to fourteen years of exclusive rights to their invention, provided that: ...“they be not contrary to the law nor mischievous to the state by raising prices of commodities at home, or hurt of trade, or generally inconvenient.”
Before that, in 1474 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.
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[edit] Situation prior to the statute
Prior to the statute, the crown would issue letters patent providing any person with a "monopoly" to produce particular goods or provide particular services:
The first of them 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 the 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 became increasingly open to abuse as the Crown granted patents in respect of all sorts of known goods (salt, for example).
This power, which was to raise money for the crown, was widely abused, and 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 patents to the inventors or introducers of original inventions for a fixed number of years.
[edit] Follow-up
In the reign of Queen Anne the rules were changed again so that a written description of the article was given.
Section 6 of the Statute refers to "manner[s] of new manufacture... [by] inventors", and this section remains the foundation for patent law in New Zealand and Australia. The Statute of Monopolies was later developed by the courts to produce modern patent law; this innovation was soon adopted by other countries.
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.
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