Patents for invention: setting the stage for the British industrial revolution?

The importance of patents for economic development in general and forBritish industrialization in particular remains an unresolved issue, but one thatduring the past twenty-five years has benefited from intensive historical re-search. This paper re-examines the debate in the light both of that research andof revisionist histories of the British industrial revolution. It focuses on the natureand operation of the English patent system during the eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries, prior to its reform in 1852. First, it re-examines the upwardtrend in patenting that begins in 1762 and coincides neatly but deceptively withthe classic industrial revolution. Second, it investigates how much inventive ac-tivity was conducted beyond the patent system and is consequently not capturedby the patent statistics. Third, it suggests we should think of the patent system asa technology in its own right: as with all technologies, it was shaped by the cir-cumstances of its invention and development. It was a product of a period thatwas redefining property as subject to exclusively private ownership, and to this«intellectual property» was no exception. Unless we recognise that a patent, firstand foremost, created a piece of private property, we are missing the point.Patenting had at least as much to do with investing as inventing; as much to do04_Christine.qxp 22/1/10 11:55 Página 57