MacLeod Christine. Inventing the Industrial Revolution The English Patent System, 1660-1800

Cambridge University Press, 2002. — 316 p. — ISBN 9780521893992.This book examines the development of the English patent system and its relationship with technical change during the period between 1660 and 1800, when the patent system evolved from an instrument of royal patronage into one of commercial competition among the inventors and manufacturers of the Industrial Revolution. It analyses the legal and political framework within which patenting took place and gives an account of the motivations and fortunes of patentees, who obtained patents for a variety of purposes beyond the simple protection of an invention. It includes the first in-depth attempt to gauge the reliability of the patent statistics as a measure of inventive activity and technical change in the early part of the Industrial Revolution, and suggests that the distribution of patents is a better guide to the advance of capitalism than to the centres of inventive activity. It also queries the common assumption that the chief goal of inventors was to save labour, and examines contemporary criticism of the patent system in the light of the changing conceptualisation of invention among natural scientists and political economists.List of tables and figure page
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Notes on stylePatents 1550—1660: law, policy and controversy
The later-Stuart patent grant - an instrument of policy?
The development of the patent system, 1660-1800
The judiciary and the enforcement of patent rights
The decision to patent
Invention outside the patent system
Patents in a capitalist economy
The long-term rise in patents
The goals of invention
Patents: criticisms and alternatives
A new concept of invention
Notes

Index