Monopoly 30-35 (1946)). The Statute of Monopolies outlawed these “odious
monopolies” or favors of the Crown, but, contrary to the concurring opinion, the Statute
had nothing whatever to do with narrowing or eliminating categories of inventive subject
matter eligible for a British patent. See Prager, Historical Background and Foundation
of American Patent Law, 5 Am. J. Legal Hist. at 313 (“The statute [of Monopolies] said
nothing about meritorious functions of patents, nothing about patent disclosures, and
nothing about patent procedures; it was only directed against patent abuses.”).
Patents for inventions had been granted by the Crown long before 1623. See
Hulme, The History of the Patent System Under the Prerogative and at Common Law,
12 L.Q. Rev. at 143 (the first patent grant to the “introducer of a newly-invented
process” was in 1440); Klitzke, Historical Background of the English Patent Law, 41
J.P.O.S. at 626-27 (discussing first patents for “invention” in England in the fifteenth
century). That practice was unaffected by the terms of the Statute of Monopolies, which
rendered “utterly void” all “Monopolies and all Commissions, Grants, Licenses, Charters
and Letters Patent” that were directed to “the sole Buying, Selling, Making, Working or
Using any Thing within this Realm,” 21 Jac. 1, c.3, §I (Eng.), but which specifically
excepted Letters Patent for inventions from that exclusion, id. §VI. The only new
limitation on patents for invention was a fourteen-year limit on the term of exclusivity.
See Klitzke, Historical Background of the English Patent Law, 41 J.P.O.S. at 649.
The usage “Letters Patent” described one of the forms of document whereby the
Crown granted various rights, whether the grant was for an odious monopoly that the
Statute of Monopolies eliminated, or for rights to an invention new to England. That
usage was not changed by the Statute of Monopolies. Nor were other aspects of the
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