The concept of patents dates back to 1421, Florence, Italy, when Filippo Brunelleschi was granted the first recorded patent, for the design and use of a ship, the Badalone. This ship was intended to ferry supplies up the Arno river to the city for the building of the Florentine cathedral dome, that Brunelleschi had designed. Unfortunately the Badalone sank during delivery of a load of white marble. The Venetian Senate passed the first patent law in 1474, granting limited duration monopoly for original devices.
In England King Henry IV granted that country's first patent for stained glass manufacturing in 1449. During this time, a patent was a government-granted monopoly, so could be as much a right to manufacture or trade as well as the right to deny others to do so. Toward the end of the 16th century, the Crown's corrupt abuse of granting monopolies was causal in the evolution of the rule of law and judicial power at the expense of the monarch, and set the country on the path to eventual civil war.
In the United States, the governmental right to grant patents was enshrined in the constitution in Article 1. The first U.S. patent act was in 1790.
Prior to 1910, when they were abolished by Congress, inventors could submit caveats to the Patent Office. They were preliminary applications in which the inventor made claims to one or more potential inventions without presenting the detail required in a formal patent application. The Patent Office noted the subject matter of the caveat and placed it in a confidential archive. If within one year another inventor filed an application on a similar process or device, the Patent Office notified the holder of the caveat, who then had three months to submit a formal application.
In Japan during the Edo period, there was a tendency to abhor new things, a "Law for New Items" was proclaimed in the year 6 of the Kyoho Era (1721). The purpose of this law was described as "to ensure that absolutely no new types of products would be manufactured".
Interesting Facts About Patents
• Thomas Jefferson was the first Patent Examiner.
• In 1790, the cost to obtain a patent was between $4 and $5.
• The first U.S. patent was granted on July 31, 1790, to Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vt., for an improvement in "the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process."
• Mary Kies of Killingly, Conn., was the first women to obtain a patent, she received a patent in 1809 for a way to weave "straw with silk or thread."
• Chester Carlson, a patent agent who tired of having to make multiple copies of patent applications using carbon paper came up with a new copying system in 1959 and took it to IBM for evaluation. The "experts" at IBM determined potential sales to be minimal because people wouldn’t want to use a bulky machine when they had carbon paper. Carlson’s invention was the xerography process, the company founded on the system is Xerox.
• Abraham Lincoln while a congressman from Illinois, received Patent No. 6,469 for "A Device for Buoying Vessels over Shoals." The idea of the invention was that if a ship ran aground in shallow waters, the bellows would be filled with air, and the vessel, thus buoyed, would float clear. The model Lincoln whittled can be seen at the Smithsonian's National Museum in Washington.
• Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) received Patent No. 121,992 for "An Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments." He later received two more patents: one for a self-pasting scrapbook and one for a game to help players remember important historical dates.
