History of Patents

550 years of invention, on one page.

From Venice's 1474 patent law to USPTO AI-inventorship guidance, a curated timeline of the inventions and legal moments that shaped how we own ideas.

1. 1474

   The first patent law — Venice

   The Venetian Patent Statute granted 10-year monopolies to inventors of new arts and machines in exchange for public disclosure. The structure — limited monopoly traded for disclosure — survived 550 years almost unchanged.

2. 1623

   England's Statute of Monopolies

   After centuries of Crown-granted monopolies on commodities (salt, soap, playing cards), Parliament banned them — but carved out a 14-year exclusive for "true and first inventors." This became the direct ancestor of every common-law patent system.

3. 1790

   The Patent Act of 1790

   Signed by George Washington. Created the first U.S. patent system. A patent application required a model, a description, and a drawing — reviewed by Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph personally. Three patents were granted that year.

4. 1790

   X1 — the first U.S. patent

   Granted to Samuel Hopkins on July 31, 1790 for an improved method of making potash. The original document was lost in the Patent Office fire of 1836. Hopkins paid the equivalent of about $1,400 in today's money for his patent.

1. 1836

   Patent Office fire — and the X-series

   On December 15, 1836, a fire destroyed the U.S. Patent Office, losing roughly 10,000 patents. Patents granted before the fire are retroactively prefixed with "X." Only about 2,800 X-patents were reconstructed from inventorinventorThe person who actually conceived the invention. Listed on the patent regardless of who owns it.Read more → copies.

2. 1849

   Lincoln's flotation device patent

   Abraham Lincoln became the only U.S. president to be granted a patent — US 6,469, for "buoying vessels over shoals" using inflatable chambers. He never commercialized it.

3. 1876

   Bell vs. Gray — the telephone race

   Alexander Graham Bell filed US 174,465 on February 14, 1876 — hours before Elisha Gray filed a similar caveat for the same invention. The Supreme Court upheld Bell's priority. The single-day timing remains one of patent history's most consequential coincidences.

4. 1880

   Edison's incandescent lamp

   US 223,898 — Edison's carbon-filament bulb. Not the first incandescent lamp, but the first one practical at scale. Edison and Joseph Swan (UK) had parallel patents; they ultimately merged into Ediswan rather than litigate to extinction.

1. 1906

   The Wright Brothers' flying machine — US 821,393

   Filed 1903, granted 1906. The patent didn't claimclaimA numbered sentence at the end of a patent that legally defines what the inventor owns. The most important section.Read more → "powered flight" — it claimed wing-warping for three-axis control. The Wrights' aggressive enforcement is widely credited with slowing U.S. aviation while European competitors advanced.

2. 1930

   Plant Patent Act

   Congress created a brand new patent category: plant patents, for asexually reproduced new varieties (cuttings, grafts, buds — not seeds). Luther Burbank had lobbied for this for decades; he died four years before it passed.

3. 1947

   The transistor — Bell Labs

   Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. The patent (US 2,524,035) was filed in 1948. AT&T licensed the technology broadly under antitrust pressure — fueling the entire semiconductor industry.

4. 1961

   The integrated circuit — Kilby & Noyce

   Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments) and Robert Noyce (Fairchild) developed integrated circuits independently. Both patents granted. After a decade of litigationlitigationA lawsuit over patent infringement. Litigated patents often signal commercial importance.Read more →, the companies cross-licensed. Kilby received the 2000 Nobel Prize; Noyce had died before he could share it.

5. 1980

   Diamond v. Chakrabarty — patenting life

   The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a genetically modified bacterium could be patented: "anything under the sun that is made by man." Opened the door to biotech patenting and arguably created the modern biotech industry overnight.

6. 1981

   Diamond v. Diehr — software gets patentable

   The Supreme Court ruled that a process using a computer to cure rubber was patentable — even though it contained a mathematical algorithm. Software-related patents would explode in the following two decades.

7. 1982

   Federal Circuit established

   Congress created the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, centralizing all patent appeals in one specialized court. The intent was uniformity. The effect was a dramatic increase in patents granted and enforced.

8. 1990

   Polaroid wins $909M from Kodak

   After 14 years of litigationlitigationA lawsuit over patent infringement. Litigated patents often signal commercial importance.Read more →, Polaroid won a record-shattering damages award against Kodak for infringing instant-photography patents. Kodak exited the instant-camera market entirely. Polaroid filed for bankruptcy 11 years later.

9. 1998

   State Street Bank — business methods

   Federal Circuit ruled that a business method implemented in software could be patented. Cue a decade of explosive growth in software, fintech, and "one-click" style patents — many of which were later invalidated.

10. 1999

    Amazon's one-click — US 5,960,411

    Granted September 28, 1999. Amazon licensed it to Apple for an undisclosed sum. The patent expired in 2017 — opening one-click checkout to every retailer.

1. 2000

   RSA released to the public domain

   RSA Security released the algorithm into the public domainpublic domainThe status of an invention no longer protected by any IP rights — anyone can use it freely. Patents enter the public domain after expiration.Read more → on September 6, 2000 — two weeks before the patent (US 4,405,829) would have expired naturally. A symbolic gift to global cryptography.

2. 2001

   PageRank patent granted to Stanford

   Larry Page was a graduate student; Stanford owned the patent. Google licensed it for an estimated 1.8 million shares. Stanford eventually sold those shares for roughly $336 million.

3. 2007

   Apple files for the iPhone patents

   Apple filed the foundational iPhone patents in early 2007. The multi-touch heuristics patent (US 7,479,949) would become central to Apple v. Samsung — a case that produced a $1.05B jury verdict in 2012.

4. 2011

   America Invents Act (AIA)

   The most sweeping U.S. patent reform in 60 years. Switched from "first to invent" to "first to file" — aligning with the rest of the world. Created Inter Partes Review (IPR), which would invalidate roughly 60% of challenged claimsclaimsThe numbered statements at the end of a patent that legally define what the inventor owns.Read more → over the next decade.

5. 2012

   Doudna/Charpentier file CRISPR-Cas9

   UC Berkeley's Doudna and the Max Planck Institute's Charpentier filed first. The Broad Institute (Feng Zhang) filed later but got their patent granted faster via fast-track. A multi-year USPTO interference battle followed, eventually awarded in the Broad's favor on key claimsclaimsThe numbered statements at the end of a patent that legally define what the inventor owns.Read more →.

6. 2014

   Alice v. CLS Bank — software patents narrowed

   Supreme Court ruled that abstractabstractA short summary at the front of the patent describing the invention. Not legally binding.Read more → ideas implemented on a computer are not patent-eligible. Roughly 80% of software-patent challenges under §101 began succeeding. Many "business method" patents from the State Street era became unenforceable overnight.

7. 2018

   Apple v. Samsung settles

   After seven years of litigationlitigationA lawsuit over patent infringement. Litigated patents often signal commercial importance.Read more →, $1.05B verdicts, appeals, and Supreme Court review, the parties settled on undisclosed terms. The case had reshaped how design patents were valued — particularly for consumer electronics.

8. 2020

   First AI-listed inventor application — DABUS

   Stephen Thaler tried to list "DABUS" — an AI system — as the sole inventorinventorThe person who actually conceived the invention. Listed on the patent regardless of who owns it.Read more → on patent applications worldwide. South Africa accepted; the UK, US, EU, and Australia rejected. The U.S. position: only natural persons can be inventors.

9. 2024

   USPTO AI inventorship guidance

   The USPTO issued formal guidance: an AI cannot be a named inventorinventorThe person who actually conceived the invention. Listed on the patent regardless of who owns it.Read more →, but AI-assisted inventions are still patentable as long as a natural person made a "significant contribution" to the conception. The line between assistance and authorship remains contested.

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