Inventing the Industrial Revolution. The English patent system, 1660-1800

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  • Name Intellectual property inc patents, trade marks, designs & copyright inc management

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Winner of the Wadsworth Prize for Business History, 1988. Scholarly work examining the development of the English patent system and its relationship with technical change,1660-1800, and its evolution from an instrument of royal patronage to one of commercial competition among the inventors and manufacturers of the Industrial Revolution. Inter alia discusses the reliability of patent statistics as a measure of inventive activity. Has sections: 'Patents, 1550-1660 - law, policy and controversy; 'Later Stuart patent grant - an instrument of policy?'; 'Development of the patent system, 1660-1800'; 'Judiciary and the enforcement of patent rights'; 'The decision to patent'; 'Invention outside the patent system'; 'Patents in a capitalist economy'; 'Long term rise in patents'; 'Goals of invention'; 'Patents - criticisms and alternatives'; 'A new concept of invention'. See the writer's doctoral thesis 'Patents for Invention and Technical Change in England, 1660-1753', Cambridge, 1982