PROPER INTERPRETATION THE VENETIAN PATENT ACT OF 1474
Ted Sichelman* & Toni Veneri**
ABSTRACT
Scholars have widely and consistently contended that the Venetian Republic adopted the first
“formal” patent system in its Patent Act of 1474. Based upon an extensive examination of
archival material from the State Archives of Venice, we conclusively show that this view is
incorrect. Rather, the expansive and highly sophisticated Venetian patent system documented by
previous scholars was wholly based upon “customary” law—a form of executive and legislative
branch common law—which required a direct grant by the Doge’s Council or, much more
commonly, a separate legislative act for each patent by the vote of the Senate. The first
documentary evidence of a patent granted for a specific technological invention (and conferring
exclusionary rights) under this customary system is in 1416, making it the earliest known patent
of its kind in the world.
In contrast to these Senate-based grants, the Patent Act of 1474 conferred authority on a specific
Executive Branch administrative department, the Provveditori di Comun, to grant short-term (10-
year) “statutory” patents without Senatorial approval, while maintaining the Senate’s inherent
authority to grant patents under the same customary law protocol it had used before the Act. In
essence, the Patent Act of 1474 established a petty patent system with a quick examination
process, while retaining a lengthier customary patent process for longer-term patents that
typically commanded harsher penalties for infringement.
Because of the difficulties in locating these statutory patents and related examination documents,
no single legal scholar has identified, much yet discussed, these patents. This failure has led
scholars to misread the 1474 Act as somehow “formalizing” or “confirming” via statute the
previous system of so-called “ad hoc” grants by the Senate and Doge’s Council, thereby
cementing a system of administrative review of patent applications. In this manner, scholars have
found the Act to be a watershed in the historical development of patent systems worldwide. Our
archival evidence decisively shows that the Patent Act of 1474 was not the beginnings of the first
“formal” patent system. The Senate-based system was founded upon customary law from the
start in 1416 and rested upon the same foundation until its end in 1796. The 1474 Act simply
erected a parallel “statutory” petty patent system. Nor did the Act somehow incorporate
administrative review into the customary system—the Provveditori di Comun was involved in
reviewing customary patent applications before 1474.
On the other hand, the statutory system erected under the 1474 Act may have served as a
template for administrative-centered patent systems in other countries, such as England and the
Netherlands, as the Venetian practices migrated via Venetian inventors throughout Europe. In
this sense, the Act may potentially be viewed as setting forth the foundations of the modern,
administrative patent system.
*
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law.
** Ph.D., History, University of Trieste (Italy)