Patents in History

August 24, 2009
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts

In 500 BC, in the Greek city of Sybaris (located in what is now southern Italy), “encouragement was held out to all who should discover any new refinement in luxury, the profits arising from which were secured to the inventor by patent for the space of a year.”

The Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi received a three year patent for a barge with hoisting gear, that carried marble along the Arno River in 1421.

Patents in the modern sense originated in 1474, when the Republic of Venice enacted a decree by which new and inventive devices, once they had been put into practice, had to be communicated to the Republic in order to obtain the right to prevent others from using them.