History of Patents and Intellectual Property

1. The word “patent”

Litterae patentes were open letters of the sovereign, addressed to all and sealed so that they could be read without breaking the seal. English monarchs used them to grant privileges of every kind: titles, offices, land and trading monopolies. A patent for an invention is one survivor of that practice, which is why Indian law still speaks of the “grant” of a patent and why early patent doctrine treated it as a privilege of the Crown rather than a property right of the inventor.

2. Early privileges and the Venetian statute

Craft guilds in medieval Europe controlled trade secrets and admission to crafts. Cities competing for skilled artisans began to offer them temporary exclusive rights. The Venetian Patent Statute of 1474 is regarded as the first general patent law. It offered protection for ten years to any person who built in Venice a new and ingenious device not previously made there, once it was reduced to practice, and allowed the government to use the device. The statute already contained the modern elements: novelty (local), utility, a fixed term, registration and an infringement remedy. Galileo obtained a Venetian privilege in 1594 for a water-raising machine.

3. England: abuse and the Statute of Monopolies

Elizabeth I and James I granted monopolies freely, including over salt, playing cards and starch, to reward courtiers and raise revenue. Prices rose and Parliament objected. In Darcy v. Allein (1602), the Case of Monopolies, the court held a monopoly over playing cards void at common law as contrary to the liberty of trade. Parliament then passed the Statute of Monopolies, 1624. It declared monopolies void, but section 6 saved grants for fourteen years to the “true and first inventor” of a “manner of new manufacture” within England, so long as it was not contrary to law or mischievous to the state. The phrase “manner of new manufacture” remained the test of patentable subject matter in English and Australian law for three centuries (see NRDC v. Commissioner of Patents, High Court of Australia, 1959), and the fourteen-year term was two apprenticeship cycles of seven years.

Two later developments made the patent a modern instrument. First, from the eighteenth century the courts required a written specification fully disclosing the invention, so the grant became a bargain with the public (Liardet v. Johnson, 1778, associated with Lord Mansfield). Second, the Patent Law Amendment Act, 1852 created a single patent office and a cheaper procedure, which opened the system to ordinary inventors of the industrial revolution.

4. United States and France

The US Constitution (1787) gave Congress power to secure to inventors the exclusive right to their discoveries for limited times, and the first federal Patent Act followed in 1790, with Thomas Jefferson among the first examiners. The Patent Act of 1836 introduced examination for novelty by a professional office. France enacted a patent law in 1791 in the language of natural rights, describing an invention as the property of its author. The difference between the English and American utilitarian approach and the French natural-rights approach still shows in the debate traced in the theories note.

5. The anti-patent movement and internationalisation

In the mid-nineteenth century free-traders attacked patents as monopolies that hindered trade. The Netherlands abolished patents in 1869 and Switzerland resisted a patent law until 1888. The movement faded after the depression of 1873, as industrial nations turned protectionist. At the same time inventors refused to exhibit at the Vienna International Exhibition of 1873 for fear of losing their inventions to foreign copying. The response was the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, 1883, followed by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 1886. Their secretariats united in 1893 as BIRPI, which became the World Intellectual Property Organization under the WIPO Convention of 1967. The last stage is the TRIPS Agreement, 1994, which tied minimum IP standards to WTO membership and trade sanctions.

6. Indian patent law

1. Act VI of 1856. The first Indian patent legislation, based on the British Act of 1852, granted exclusive privileges for fourteen years to inventors of new manufactures. It was repealed because it had been enacted without the approval of the British Crown, and was re-enacted with changes as Act XV of 1859.
2. Later colonial statutes. The Patterns and Designs Protection Act, 1872 extended protection to designs, and the Inventions and Designs Act, 1888 consolidated the law.
3. Indian Patents and Designs Act, 1911. It created a Controller of Patents and governed India for sixty years. Most patents under it were held by foreigners and were not worked in India, so they served as import monopolies, especially in medicines.
4. Committees after independence. The Bakshi Tek Chand Committee (1949–50) examined whether the patent system served the national interest. The Justice N. Rajagopala Ayyangar Committee report (1959) is the intellectual basis of the present Act. It recommended that patents in food, medicines and chemicals be limited to processes, that terms be shortened for those fields, and that compulsory licensing be strengthened to ensure working in India.
5. Patents Act, 1970. In force from 20 April 1972, it gave only process patents for food, drugs and chemicals with a shorter term than other patents (at most seven years from filing), and allowed licences of right. Indian generic manufacturers grew under this regime and India became a major exporter of cheap medicines.
6. TRIPS amendments. The 1999 amendment, with effect from 1 January 1995, introduced the mailbox for pharmaceutical product applications and exclusive marketing rights, after the WTO ruled against India in India – Patent Protection for Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Chemical Products (WT/DS50, Appellate Body, 1997). The 2002 amendment set a uniform twenty-year term and rewrote compulsory licensing. The 2005 amendment introduced product patents in all fields from 1 January 2005, and added section 3(d) and the pre-grant opposition grounds. The Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2024 simplified procedure and working statements.

7. History of the other rights, in one line each

• Copyright: printing privileges granted to the Stationers’ Company; the Statute of Anne, 1710; in India the Copyright Act, 1847, the Indian Copyright Act, 1914 (applying the UK Act of 1911) and the Copyright Act, 1957.
• Trade marks: guild marks and the action for passing off; the UK Trade Marks Registration Act, 1875; in India the Trade Marks Act, 1940, the Trade and Merchandise Marks Act, 1958 and the Trade Marks Act, 1999.
• Designs: the Act of 1872, Part II of the 1911 Act, and the Designs Act, 2000.
• Newer rights: the Geographical Indications of Goods Act, 1999, the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Design Act, 2000, the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 and the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, all passed in the TRIPS decade.

How this is examined

As a short note (“History of patents”) give Venice 1474, the Statute of Monopolies 1624, Paris 1883, the Indian Acts of 1856, 1911 and 1970, and TRIPS 1994 with the 2005 amendment. As an essay (“Trace the evolution of patent law in India”) build the Indian story around the Ayyangar Report and the policy choice it represents, and close with the TRIPS amendments and the Novartis reading of section 3(d) as the place where that earlier policy survives.