A · How many
Jurisdictions compared by period
471 · 55Venice · England 1551–1600
Key point
The Venetian Senate granted 471 invention patents in 1551–1600 (secondary figure); England, from 1561, 55. Dutch documents issuing a privilege number 241 in 1581–1621, and Venetian printing-privilege documents 242 in 1469–1526. The counting units differ.
- Definition
- Privileges per half-century for England (our count), the Dutch Republic (our recount of the Buning data) and Venice (figures quoted from the literature), side by side.
- Formula
- sum per period, with the counting unit in its own column
- How to read it
- The units differ: Venetian inventions are Senate grants (secondary), Dutch figures are documents issuing a privilege, English figures are grants, Venetian printing figures are Fulin documents.
- Caveats
- The Venetian invention figures were not counted here, and the two published series (43, 126, 471 and 33, 116, 461) differ by 10 in each period. England 1551–1600 starts in 1561, and Hulme's 55 include four grants for regulating trade; 1601–1650 includes the 1604–1616 gap.
Table
Download CSV · m_a2_periods.csv
| Period | Jurisdiction | Kind | Count | Unit | Basis | Source | Coverage | Other count | Source of other count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1469-1500 | VE | printing | 104 | privilege document | own count | Fulin 1882 (docs 1-256, to Nov. 1526) | 1469-1526 | ||
| 1501-1550 | VE | printing | 138 | privilege document | own count | Fulin 1882 (docs 1-256, to Nov. 1526) | 1469-1526 | ||
| 1551-1600 | GB | invention | 55 | grant | own count | Hulme 1896/1900; Woodcroft 1854 | 1561-1603, 1617-1852 | ||
| 1551-1600 | NL | invention | 77 | privilege document | own count of Buning & Looijesteijn data | figshare 10.6084/m9.figshare.16685788 | 1581-1621 | ||
| 1601-1650 | GB | invention | 127 | grant | own count | Hulme 1896/1900; Woodcroft 1854 | 1561-1603, 1617-1852 | ||
| 1601-1650 | NL | invention | 164 | privilege document | own count of Buning & Looijesteijn data | figshare 10.6084/m9.figshare.16685788 | 1581-1621 | ||
| 1651-1700 | GB | invention | 238 | grant | own count | Hulme 1896/1900; Woodcroft 1854 | 1561-1603, 1617-1852 | ||
| 1701-1750 | GB | invention | 292 | grant | own count | Hulme 1896/1900; Woodcroft 1854 | 1561-1603, 1617-1852 | ||
| 1751-1800 | GB | invention | 1,804 | grant | own count | Hulme 1896/1900; Woodcroft 1854 | 1561-1603, 1617-1852 | ||
| 1801-1852 | GB | invention | 11,859 | grant | own count | Hulme 1896/1900; Woodcroft 1854 | 1561-1603, 1617-1852 | ||
| 1474-1500 | VE | invention | 43 | Senate grant | secondary | Comino, Galasso & Graziano 2017, p. 7 (from Berveglieri 1995/1999) | 1474-1500 | 33 | Kostylo 2010, n. 5 (Berveglieri 1995, pp. 21-22) |
| 1501-1550 | VE | invention | 126 | Senate grant | secondary | Comino, Galasso & Graziano 2017, p. 7 (from Berveglieri 1995/1999) | 1501-1550 | 116 | Kostylo 2010, n. 5 (Berveglieri 1995, pp. 21-22) |
| 1551-1600 | VE | invention | 471 | Senate grant | secondary | Comino, Galasso & Graziano 2017, p. 7 (from Berveglieri 1995/1999) | 1551-1600 | 461 | Kostylo 2010, n. 5 (Berveglieri 1995, pp. 21-22) |
| before 1474 | VE | invention | 5 | ad hoc privilege | secondary | Comino, Galasso & Graziano 2017, p. 7 (Mandich 1936) | -1473 |
secondaryReliability card
Secondary figure: quoted from the literature and not recounted here
- Fulin recoding, privilege or not
- 40/40 (100%, 95% CI 91–100%)
- Fulin recoding, term
- 40/40 (100%, 95% CI 91–100%)
- Fulin recoding, beneficiary type
- 37/40 (92%, 95% CI 80–97%)
Prior results
- Venetian Senate patents: 5 ad hoc privileges before 1474 (Mandich 1936), 43 in 1474–1500, 126 in 1501–1550, 471 in 1551–1600. — Comino, Galasso & Graziano (2017), NBER WP 24118, p. 7.
- Kostylo (2010), citing Berveglieri 1995 (pp. 21–22), gives 33, 116 and 461 grants by the Senate alone for the same periods. Each is exactly 10 below the figures above; this site has not settled which is right. — Kostylo, J. (2010), 'From gunpowder to print', in Deazley, Kretschmer & Bently (eds.), Privilege and Property, Open Book Publishers, n. 5.
- 2,130 patents granted by the Senate (Terra), 1474–1788. — Berveglieri, R. (2020), «Ingegnosi artificij», vol. 1, Cierre, preface.
- 952 Dutch patent applications 1515–1797 (23 under Charles V and Philip II, 574 States General, 355 provincial States; secondary citation). — Doorman, G. (1940), Octrooien voor uitvindingen in de Nederlanden, as summarized in the review in Maandblad Oud-Utrecht, Sept. 1941.
Sources
- E. Wyndham Hulme, 'The History of the Patent System under the Prerogative and at Common Law', Law Quarterly Review 12 (1896) 141–154, and '… A Sequel', LQR 16 (1900) 44–56: the list of industrial monopoly grants 1561–1603, Nos. I–LV (55 grants), and the summary table on p. 52, transcribed by hand and checked against the page images. (public domain, 1896, 1900; https://archive.org/details/sim_law-quarterly-review_1900-01_16_61)
- Bennet Woodcroft, Titles of Patents of Invention, Chronologically Arranged, from March 2, 1617 (14 James I.) to October 1, 1852 (16 Victoriae), London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1854, 2 parts (Nos. 1–14,359). Entries were split from the word coordinates of the Internet Archive OCR of the University of Illinois copy (
chronologicalin1617grea_0,chronologicalind1617grea); 115 pages on which that OCR lost entry numbers were read again from the page images with tesseract 5. (public domain, 1854; https://archive.org/details/chronologicalin1617grea_0) - Rinaldo Fulin, 'Documenti per servire alla storia della tipografia veneziana', Archivio Veneto 23 (1882), documents 1–256 (1469–1526), Internet Archive
ArchivioVeneto23OCR. Whether a document is a privilege, its term and the beneficiary type were coded document by document under a codebook fixed before coding. (public domain, 1882; https://archive.org/details/ArchivioVeneto23) - Marius Buning & Henk Looijesteijn, 'Patents in the Dutch Republic, 1581-1621', figshare, 2021, doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.16685788.v1 (CC BY 4.0), the data behind Buning, Knowledge, Patents, Power (Brill, 2021). Only documents with 'Nature of contact' code 3 (privilege issued) are counted. (CC BY 4.0; https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16685788.v1)
- Stefano Comino, Alberto Galasso & Clara Graziano, 'The Diffusion of New Institutions: Evidence from Renaissance Venice's Patent System', NBER Working Paper 24118 (2017): period counts of Venetian Senate patents (p. 7), the sector table (Table A1, from Berveglieri 1995) and the share of foreign inventors. Quoted as secondary figures only. (quotation; https://www.nber.org/papers/w24118)