The Statute of Monopolies of 1624 was enacted in England: an English parliamentary act that significantly limited the Crown’s ability to grant exclusive monopolies, except for patents for new inventions, for a limited period. It established a legal basis for the patent system, allowing patents for “any kind of new product” for 14 years, promoting competition and limiting abuses of power by the Crown in the marketplace. It was implemented 150 years after the Venetian Patent Act of March 18, 1774. In England, as it would be in France, patents were paid for and, effectively, restricted to large companies and corporations, while in Venice they remained free and therefore more libertarian and open to individual artisans and independent entrepreneurs, more similar to the later American patent system, which would, in fact, give technological development a boost in the United States compared to Great Britain and France.
