British Patent System during the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1852. From privilege to property

Notes:

Scholarly work. See the writer's doctoral thesis 'British Patent System during the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1852', Cambridge, 2013. 'Presents a fundamental reassessment of the contribution of patenting to British industrialisation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It shows that despite the absence of legislative reform, the ... system was continually evolving and responding to the needs of an industrialising economy. Inventors were able to obtain and enforce patent rights with relative ease. This placed Britain in an exceptional position. Until other countries began to enact patent laws in the 1790s, it was the only country where inventors were frequently able to appropriate returns from intellectual property, thus encouraging them to develop the new technology industrialisation required'. Structured in two parts: Part 1, 'The patent system' - 'Administration of patents. A poor man's tale'; 'Jurisprudence of patents. The specification requirement'; 'Of patents and pirates. The adjudication of patent disputes'; 'Substantive development of patent law'. Part 2, 'Patents and technology' - 'Patents and the industrial enlightenment'; 'The market in patent rights'; 'Patents and the Newcomen and Watt steam engines'; 'Capital, patents and the joint stock company'