Between mercantilism and market: privileges for invention in early modern Europe

摘要

Abstract: This paper aims at offering a reconstruction of the salient features of themost important formal institution introduced by European states in the EarlyModern Period with the aim of recognizing and protecting the intellectualproperty of the inventors. Such institutions went under different names –‘Privilegio’ in Venice, ‘Patent’ in England, ‘Privil`ege’ in France, ‘Cedula deprivilegio de invenc¸ion’ in Spain – and, in general, took the form of the concessionof a special prerogative to the inventor by the sovereign or the republic, by virtueof which he could exploit, in economic terms, his own invention through holdinga monopoly. The article starts with the origins of the privileges for invention, ofwhich the first examples are to be found in the Middle Ages, but whose official‘genesis’ is commonly identified with the Venetian law of 1474. The fundamentalcharacteristics of the Venetian system, which was later imitated by otherEuropean states, are analysed. In the following section, the adoption of this modelby those other states – Spain, France, England, and the Netherlands – isillustrated. In fact, the majority of these would make legislation on intellectualproperty an instrument of mercantilist policy, under the same conditions asprevailed in Venice. Further, we will examine some of the opportunities that thediffusion of these measures offered to those involved and the way in which they –as craftsmen, merchants, and speculators – took advantage of the business ofprivileges. Finally, before concluding, some thoughts on the changes made in thepolicy of privileges given the transformations that took place in the course of theeighteenth century, in order to understand the ‘adaptive’ capacity of theseinstitutions.