D · On what terms

Terms granted

21 → 14England median, before → after 1624

Key point

Median stated terms: 20 years under Elizabeth (Hulme), 21 in 1617–1623, 14 in 1625–1700; 10 in the Dutch Republic and 10 for Venetian printing privileges.

Definition: Term in years written in the grant. Terms not written are left blank, not filled in.
Formula: median, quartiles and counts by value among grants with a stated term
How to read it: Elizabethan terms (Hulme) range from 6 to 30 years: 44 of the 47 stated terms fall between 7 and 21, and the middle half between 10 and 21; after 1624 English terms gather at 14. Dutch and Venetian printing terms cluster around 10.
Caveats: Woodcroft's entries from about 1820 do not state the term, so those years are empty. The statutory 14 years was not assumed.

Median (bar) and interquartile range (line).

Table

Download CSV · m_d1_terms.csv

Source	Terms stated	Median	Lower quartile	Upper quartile	Min	Max	Counts by value
GB Hulme 1561-1603	47	20	10	21	6.00	30	{"6": 1, "7": 8, "8": 1, "10": 7, "11": 1, "12": 1, "15": 2, "20": 8, "21": 16, "30": 2}
GB Woodcroft 1617-1623	27	21	18	21	11.00	31	{"11": 1, "12": 1, "14": 4, "15": 1, "21": 18, "31": 2}
GB Woodcroft 1625-1700	329	14	14	14	7.00	21	{"7": 1, "11": 1, "12": 1, "14": 321, "19": 1, "21": 4}
GB Woodcroft 1701-1819	3,337	14	14	14	14.00	14	{"14": 3337}
NL Buning 1581-1621	238	10	7	12	1.00	30	{"1": 5, "2": 3, "3": 3, "4": 3, "5": 7, "6": 17, "7": 28, "8": 21, "9": 10, "10": 68, "11": 1, "12": 31, "14": 1, "15": 15, "16": 1, "20": 17, "25": 6, "30": 1}
VE Fulin 1469-1526 (printing)	183	10	10	10	0.50	25	{"0": 1, "1": 1, "2": 1, "3": 1, "4": 1, "5": 13, "6": 2, "10": 139, "12": 2, "13": 1, "15": 12, "20": 5, "25": 4}

sampledReliability card

Rule-based classification: assigned by word rules; below, the precision measured on an independently coded sample

Image check, year: 119/120 (99%, 95% CI 95–100%)
Image check, term: 118/120 (98%, 95% CI 94–100%)
Image check, number of grantees: 118/120 (98%, 95% CI 94–100%)
Image check, communication: 119/120 (99%, 95% CI 95–100%)
Text recoding, term: 210/212 (99%, 95% CI 97–100%)
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%)
Hulme transcription, date: 55/55 (100%, 95% CI 93–100%)
Hulme transcription, term: 55/55 (100%, 95% CI 93–100%)

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 ArchivioVeneto23 OCR. 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)

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