Patents in Relation to Monopoly

Abstract

Francis Bacon long ago pointed out that to know truly is to know by causes. I think it can be said with some measure of accuracy that no one can know the patent system and be capable of judging its merits and defects who does not possess a reasonably intimate knowledge of its historical foundations and development. As Mr. Justice Holmes observed, historic continuity with the past is not a duty but only a necessity and if this be so, in no field is it more applicable than in a consideration of patents and monopolies. The superficial writers of history, and their slavish imitators, have persisted in painting the picture of an English citizenry groaning under the grievous weight of monopolies dispensed with a lavish hand by the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns to greedy and avaricious courtiers and favourites who milked the populace dry with their monopolistic exactions. They point to the Statute of Monopolies of 1624 as a milestone in the history of English law—a statute forced upon a reluctant king in much the same spirit as the little affair at Runneymede four centuries earlier. That is not an accurate view. Monopolies were not all regarded as anathema either by the common law or by Parliament in those early days. If they were for the good of the realm their propriety was never questioned. From this theory evolved the thought that a new invention or the setting up of a new manufacture was a laudable thing and a grant of monopoly to its introducer by an exercise of the Crown prerogative was a beneficial act and did not offend against the principle of the common law which regarded as illegal and in restraint of trade any monopoly which took away any freedom or liberty enjoyed by the public before the grant. From the genesis of this policy stemmed the great influx of alien workmen to England which, commencing in the reign of Edward III, was responsible for the introduction of a number of new trades and manufactures and the transmutation of England from an economy of importation to one of domestic production of manufactured goods. An examination of the patents for new inventions and manufactures granted by Elizabeth and James I will show that to them was owed in large measure the great upsurge in domestic manufacture which accompanied the policy of self-sufficiency inaugurated by Cecil and pursued under James. Whatever criticism may be offered of a few of the monopoly grants, that criticism fades before an appraisal of the benefits conferred by the introduction, under the spur of monopoly patents, of the important inventions and manufacturing which began to appear during the Tudor and Stuart periods.