 ac yn gweithio'r papurau'r cyfnodd wedi'i gwych yn cyfalwyr ac'r cyfnodd cyfnodd yn y 18th ysgrifennu. Mae'r cyfnodd a'r cyfnodd yn y 18th ysgrifennu yn y 1er ar y 17th ysgrifennu yn gwybod. Y rheswm ar y cyfnodd yn gweithio'r cyfnodd yn edrych Edward Hume fel y cwyrdd yma. Cysylltiadau ddod, ac mae'n gwneud arweithio'r cyfnodd Cysylltiad. Mae'r cyfnodd yn y 24th ysgrifennu, ddweud bod y cyfnodd yn y 18th ysgrifennu, ar y ddatton a llwyddoi'n gyfnod o'r maesiedu. Yr eitem bob yw'r pethau yn ymdweud o'r newid yn y maesiedu'n cymhwnnig a'i ychydig yw'r cyfnod sy'n cael ei fod yn hyn o'r gwneud o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r awrf! Yr hyn yn ymdweud o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod, o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod. The specification was a detailed written description of the patented invention. It had to be deposited at the Court of Chancery within a predetermined time limit after the patent had been granted. The specification was introduced in the first half of the 18th century, and there is some debate as to the reasons why. Hulme argued that the specification was introduced with the request of inventors applying for patents. They were apparently concerned that their patent would be pre-empted by another party pirating their invention before they had secured protection. To maintain secrecy, applicants requested that they only provide a description of the invention after the patent had been sealed. An agreement was made with the law officers that if the inventor failed to enter such a description that they would forfeit their patent. John Trostohun, Christine McLean, suggests that the specification was introduced on the initiative of the law officers. The law officers were responsible for deciding whether or not the patent should be granted. It was introduced to help them discriminate between ostensibly similar inventions. Limited to the role of administrative arbiter, McLean argues that the specification was of limited legal significance in the first half of the 18th century. Because the specification was so unimportant, McLean claims that wherever it was in their interests, patentease would enter intentionally misleading descriptions so that they could retain an element of secrecy about their invention. Also, no official efforts were made to use the specification as a means of disseminating the invention. To consult a specification, a party had to search the chance-free offices in which it could have been entered. Substantial fees were levied for obtaining copies and to protect their income, chance-free offices prohibited visitors from writing personal extracts. Such were the difficulties involved with consulting specifications. McLean claims that it was quite feasible for a patentease to work his patent in secrecy until reformed to the patent system in 1852. The legal status of the specification is thought to have changed later in the 18th century with Lord Mansfield's decision in Lyda versus Johnson in 1778. Apparently, for the first time, an inventor lost his patent due to the insufficiency of his specification. The specification was now apparently a binding instrument on which the legality of the patent was dependent. This was because the specification was now seen to be the vehicle by which the public would be informed of the invention and the consideration on which the patent was granted. McLeod again writes, for the first time, the recognised quid pro quo for the award of a patent was the disclosure of the invention. This sudden change in the purpose of the specification placed patentease in a vulnerable position. They could not have anticipated that the specification would become such an important document. Further, patentease was slow to adapt to the exacting criteria with which the judiciary assessed the sufficency of the specification. The situation was compounded by the prohibition of amendments to the specification once it had been entered. Conceiving the patent and the specification in this manner represents a significant conceptual development concerning invention and intellectual property. Mario Biorgioli argues that it is with the written requirement that there is a movement away from patentease's early modern privileges to patentease's intellectual property rights. This slide, very briefly, presents a scheme of distinguishing between a system of early modern privileges and modern intellectual property rights. In a system of privileges, the consideration on which the patentease is awarded is one of utility, so the second point here. It's important that the invention is considered to be of direct economic benefit. However, that might be defined. In contrast, in a system of intellectual property rights, these direct utility requirements are minimal. It is with the introduction of the specification that the consideration on the grant is supposed to change. So this comes down to the fourth point here. Now the patent is awarded for disclosing the invention by the specification. Biorgioli claims that this rationale underpins any modern intellectual property rights regime, claiming it is the specification requirement that makes the patent system defensible in political terms. This calls it something of a problem for the orthodox interpretation of the specification. It would be strange that such an important conceptual development in the patent would occur without any kind of institutional or jurisprudential precedent. The first half of this paper will look at the introduction and development specification in the first half of the 18th century. Using contemporary law officer reports, it will argue that the specification had replaced utility and the public good as the consideration on which the patent was awarded sometime before 1778. Consequently, the accuracy of the specification was a consideration in law before Liadat versus Johnson. This also implies that England had begun to move towards a system of modern intellectual property rights earlier than has been previously supposed. The second half of the talk will explore some of the implications of this doctrine, both before and after the apparent change of Liadat. Importantly, if inventors wanted an enforceable patent, they were compelled to be diligent in their production of the specification. Although the specifications produced might not be regarded today as particularly accurate or useful, and I'll be showing you an example of technical drawing from the first half of the 18th century, technical drawings and terminology remained rudimentary until the last quarter of the 18th century. Despite this, though, they were regularly consulted by contemporaries. So then, there are a few instances of specifications being produced in the 17th century, although the specification submitted by John Naysmith for his 1711 patent is regarded as the first proper. For the next two decades, the specification was not a universal requirement. Between 1711 and 1733, specifications were only ordered on about one in six patents. In the following decade, however, specifications were ordered on almost all patents, and thereafter it became mandatory. In the English application for a patent, it was the law officers who decided both whether or not a patent ought to be granted, and also decided whether or not the specification would be required. In their earliest reports, when ordering a specification, it was on the ground suggested by Hugh, i.e. to protect the invention until the patent was sealed. Here we have a few examples of some extracts from law officer reports. So on Naysmith's reports, the first where a specification was ordered, the law officer reported, the petitioner thinks it is not safe to specify in what the new invention consists, but it proposes that so soon as the patent shall be passed, the same shall be by him, ascertained under his hand and seal to be enrolled in the High Court of Chancery. We can see here a similar reasoning behind the order for John Kay's 1732 patent, with time however, this rationale begins to disappear from the reports of the law officers and is replaced with another. Increasingly, the law officers regarded the description of the invention contained in the petition to be insufficient. In these cases, the law officer would state in his report that the petitioner had to enter a specification as a condition of the patent. For example, in 1734, the Attorney General reported, in regard that the petitioner has not fully described the nature of his invention, it will be proper that a clause should be inserted in his patent to oblige him to describe it more fully by an instrument in writing to be enrolled in the High Court of Chancery. There are some instances where the law officers on their own initiative demanded fuller descriptions before 1734, but it is later in the second half of the 1730s when the specification starts to become mandatory that this latter wording comes to dominate. It is clear then that the law officers sought fuller descriptions of inventions from patentees than had been hitherto provided in the petition. Further, from the 1730s the specification was required from almost every patentee. This, however, only moves the description back one stage, the explanation back one stage. Why did the law officers decide to demand fuller descriptions? McLeod suggested it may have been to assist them in discriminating between patentees for ostensibly similar inventions. This may well have been part of the reason. Some reports do refer to the need for distinguishing between the invention for which a patent was sought and the current state of the art. But the problem with this explanation is that the law officers were hardly inundated with patentees between which they had to distinguish. In the 33 years it took for the specification to become mandatory. Just over 200 patentees were rewarded in less than seven a year. Perhaps more tellingly the specification also became a requirement for the patent in Ireland and Scotland at the same time. Yet in the first half of the 18th century only six patentees were rewarded in Ireland and only two in Scotland. So there simply can't have been the need to distinguish between patentees in the manner suggested by McLeod. This resurrects the possibility that the specification became mandatory because it was intended to act as a means of disseminating patented invention and that it became the consideration on which the patent was awarded. If we go back to this quickly on the second point for public good being the consideration of the patents that clearly declines in the first half of the 18th century. And this trend can be clearly seen in the hardwick papers by comparing the reports of the first Earl who was a law officer up between 1720 and 1733 with those of his second son who was a law officer some 30 years later. The reports of the first Earl were often very extensive and petitions were rejected if an invention was not considered to be in the public interest to encourage. For example, in 1728 the petition of Nicholas Mandel for his invention for improved tallow candles was rejected on the recommendation of the excise commissioners because the duty on tallow candles is one penny per pound and on those made of wax eight pence per pound and if the candles made after his new method should be used instead of wax it will prevent the consumption of wax candles and lessen the revenue in proportion. Another consideration of importance was the balance of payments and trade. Lord Hardwick noted approvingly of William Highton's petition for a new method of producing sodium carbonate that would take considerable sums of money sent abroad to purchase the said commodities from the Baltic and elsewhere. In contrast, 30 years later the reports of his son were formulaic and cursory. He never considers whether the invention would be in the public interest however defined and he never forwards a petition to another government body such as the excise commissioners which his father commonly did. By the 1760s then the public good had disappeared as a criterion by which a patent was granted. It also had also disappeared as a legal consideration. Later, in Archright vs Nightingale in 1785 Defence Council attempted to argue against Archright's patent because by the statute against monopolies no patent is to prevail and that is generally inconvenient or against the public trade. This argument was quash by Lord Loughborough as nothing could be more essentially mischievous than the questions of property between A and B should ever be permitted to be decided upon considerations of public convenience. Instead, it appears that the public good had been displaced by the specification as the consideration on which the patent was granted. Although the legal records before the 1780s sparse it appears that the specification particularly its accuracy was an important issue in litigation. For example, in 1731 Trinity House the government body responsible for managing the nation's lighthouses the Trinity House petitioned the Privy Council to revoke Robert Hamlin's patent to fall distinguishing lights. Significantly, Trinity House claimed that the specification was insufficient on the grounds that no method of actually distinguishing one light from another had been described by Hamlin. The Privy Council accepted this recommendation annulling his patent amongst other reasons because he hath not performed the condition in the letter's patent whereby it is required to enroll a specification thereof. The instrument enrolled by him not ascertaining the nature of the invention. The issue also arose at common law 10 years before Liadat vs Johnson. In Yewbury vs Wallace in 1768 the patency lost because an accurate description of his invention was not given pursuant to his patent. Finally, it appears from contemporary writers that the accuracy of the specification was of legal significance. In 1774 William Kenrick observed that a secure patent was dependent on a precise mode of specification. It would be too much to claim that the specification was conceived as the contractual consideration of the patent from its introduction. However, the contractual conceptualisation of the patent does have jurisprudential antecedence stretching back 50 years. Firstly, although the specification was introduced for a number of reasons there was soon a clear demand for accurate and full descriptions of patents which from the 1730s became mandatory. Secondly, the accuracy of these specifications was of legal importance long before 1778. Thirdly, we've seen the disappearance of public good as a condition on which the patent was awarded and enforced. Also, as a quick side note on the other important factor in early modern patents the training of users as a means of dissemination this is more or less disappeared at the start of the 18th century. There's only one case regarding a petition, two petitions for similar invention where it's decided on this point. That was in the 1710s and aside from that it's unimportant. But returning to the specification as a contract there is no smoking gun no definitive statement in the 1730s where the patent was conceived as a contract when returned for their patent monopoly the patency had to provide a full description. It's also unlikely that there is one instead these were developments that were occurring over a number of decades. From the 1780s however when the court records do start to improve this contractual conceptualisation of the patent becomes ubiquitous in the legal literature and the court records. So here we have a few examples. For example, in the first one in Turner versus Winter Buller stated the consideration which the patency gives for his monopoly is the benefit which the public are to derive from his invention after the patent is expired and that patent is secured to them by means of a specification of the invention. There are however two practical problems with arguing that specification was the condition on which the patent was awarded in both the 18th and 19th centuries. Firstly, if the legal status of the specification was so important why did so many inventors enter of misleading specifications as is claimed by unclined? If they knew that their patent would not be enforceable as a result of entering a deficient specification surely they would endeavour to enter as full description as they could. Secondly, if the specification was intended to inform the public why was it virtually withheld from you? As mentioned in the introduction it is thought to have been prohibitively difficult for the public to access specification and chancellery. This also introduces a wider problem with the operation of the English patent system during the industrial revolution. As mentioned before McLeod considers it to have been possible to work a patent invention in secret. If this were so it would entirely undermine the rationale for awarding patents and would raise serious queries over the encouragement provided by patents to the development and diffusion of technology during the industrial revolution. On the first problem of poor specifications it suddenly appears that in the first few decades after the specification was introduced misleading descriptions were sometimes submitted on purpose. For example, in 1760 one writer reported a conversation with a London chemist where he asked why the manner of making up and giving his remedy was not in the chancellery office in a right method whereupon he smiled and with great assurance told me can you imagine we will ever pay near 80 pounds for patent and set all the chemists in town to work. In chemicals and pharmaceuticals however patents were used more as a means of advertisement than for the purpose of actually protecting the invention in the mid 18th century. In other technological sectors inventors were more diligent in their preparation for specification and this was because the legal emphasis placed on its accuracy. In 1769 so this is ten years before Liadet in 1769 James Watt took great pains in preparing the specification for the separate condenser one of the most important inventions in the industrial revolution and a very significant development in steam engineering. Watt corresponded extensively on the matter of the specification and his motivation was clear writing for example to Dr William Small as I have been informed that some patents have been defeated because the specification was not clear enough to enable other people to execute the scheme. I have added descriptions of the machines with drawers. This was quite a logical response on the part of inventors to the specification requirement. It may be surprising to hear that it has been argued that the legal emphasis on the accuracy of the specification had the opposite effect to encourage inventors to enter defective descriptions until at least 1830. This was apparently because it was thought to be so unlikely that the specification submitted to court would be deemed sufficient and so inventors would enter in an attentionally elusive description without undermining their limited chances of success in litigation. This had the advantage of pertaining to them an element of secrecy regarding the nature of their invention. I don't go into too much detail on the issue of alleged bias but very briefly McLeod bases the supposition partly on statistical work by Harold Dutton who argued that between 1770 and 1830 patentees only won a third of court cases. I've done a little bit of statistical work myself which has included information on a lot more verdicts than used by Dutton and it appears that patentees is actually won about half the time. So the quantitative basis for this argument by McLeod doesn't appear to exist. However as was mentioned briefly at the beginning technical drawings and descriptions remains rudimentary for much of the 18th century. It appears that some inventors were unsure on what information was necessary to complete a sufficient specification. Interestingly in the preparation of his specification James Watts thought he needed to be as concise as possible in his description presumably for the sake of clarity rather than being entirely comprehensive. Again he wrote to one correspondent I shall be much obliged to you to sit in judgement upon it and shorter it as much as you can to keep the meaning plain. To remedy the situation inventors began to invest large sums hiring professional assistants to ensure that their specifications were accurate. A little later in the 19th century in his evidence to the 1829 Select Committee the patent agent Moses Paul testified that he had known charges for preparing the specification to be as high as £200 and reckoned the average to be about £20. The work of James Harrison shows that from the last course of the 18th century there are a host of qualified technical advisors providing inventors with technical help in developing their invention and preparing their specification. Harrison quotes Samuel Moore the secretary to the Society of Arts from 1769 to 99 complaining no man in the United Kingdom is so often consulted upon patents as I am and who gets nothing by it. The use of professional drafts in them to assist in preparing the specification also militated against the deposit of intentionally misleading descriptions such professionals have no interest in concealment and would have been in danger of their recutations if the description later proved to be deficient in court. With the development of patent agents and technical consultants in the last quarter of the 18th century it would have been a negligent inventor who unwittingly entered a faulty specification. And indeed the judicial emphasis placed on the accuracy of the specification appears to have had precisely the effect intended i.e. to oblige inventors to enter as full and precise description of their invention as possible. Finally the availability of the specifications has to be considered. As mentioned at the beginning McLeod claims that specifications were virtually withheld from the public and that it was possible for patentease to work their invention in secret until reform in 1852. It would be strange although contemporary government practice with regards to patents was beset by strange practices but still it would be strange that such emphasis would be placed on the specification particularly its accuracy but which was then hidden away inside a chancellery. When completed specifications could be deposited into one of three chancellery offices. The petty bag the enrolment office or the roles track conveniently the three offices maintained indexes of the specifications entered in their offices. The public would be free to consult them and this made finding specifications much easier than is supposed by McLeod. The public did have to pay fees to consult specification although these were cheap. At the turn of the 19th century the fees in the roles track or enrolment office they both charged a shilling to look at specification and the petty bag charged three shillings and six pins. So these were relatively modest charges it was though expensive to obtain copies of specifications from these offices especially on long ones of technical drawings. The clerk of the petty bag Francis Abbott stated that office copies could cost up to £40 which is a very considerable sum for the period and was probably beyond the budget of all bar publishers and the most determined and resourced private individuals. It was also to protect their income from fees the clerks and these officers were on salary. The taking of extracts was forbidden although consultations were allowed to continue over a number of days. Before 1820 the feeling amongst many inventors and manufacturers was that specifications were too readily available especially for foreigners. In 1793 a bill was introduced to the House of Commons which proposed to allow the filing of secret specifications as currently such enrolment copies thereof may be obtained by foreign agents and emissaries and transmitted to foreign countries to the disadvantage of the trade of this kingdom. Although this bill was unsuccessful there was another attempt in 1820 to pass a similar bill where it proposed that copies of specifications could only be obtained when a party had entered an affidavit and motion in court but again this bill didn't come law. Accordingly because the specifications were generally available they were very often consulted and despite the expense copies were often ordered. In 1767 for example the Potter Wedgewood ordered a partner to obtain a copy of a specification letting the cost be what it will. Later in 1832 the patentation William Cartmill wrote it is constantly the practice as soon as a new and useful invention comes out for persons in the particular branch of trade to which it relates to get copies of the specification with a view to take opinions of scientific individuals acquainted with the law to ascertain whether the specification is sufficient. Specifications were also often published in the 19th century. It is relatively straightforward to trace the publication of specifications thanks to the reference index. The index provides a reference to every specification published in contemporary technical literature. So very briefly this graph I won't go into too much detail but the graph shows the percentage of patient specifications that are either published once twice or at least three times for every year between 1795 and 1850. So for example if you look at 1825 it shows that virtually all 100% of specifications were printed and about 70 to 80% were published twice and between about a third were published three or more times. Unfortunately the reference index omits publications from the 18th century with which it would have been possible to use the publication of earlier specifications. Specifications and descriptions of pasted inventions did however find their way into print during the 18th century. The philosophical transactions of the Royal Society the foremost scientific journal of the day contained numerous descriptions of new inventions and improvements many of which were patented. So here for example is a plate published in the transactions for Walter Churchman's horse powered pumping engine patented in 1733. I don't know how clearly you can see it from where you are but one useful advice is it does demonstrate some of the things I was talking about technical drawing a little earlier. Personally there is no scale which you always have in technical drawings and secondly it has some rather strange or mental features which again you would never see on technical drawings today. Unfortunately though without trawling through all the contemporary scientific journals it is impossible to be sure what proportion of pasted inventions were published during the 18th century. The chances are though is that it wasn't very large certainly nothing like in the earlier period in the later period in the second quarter of the 19th century where it's virtually all of them. That's very unlikely and that's mainly because the book and publishing trade did remain relatively small until the last quarter of the 18th century. So then to sum up in perhaps a rather haphazard way this paper has presented a partial revision to the current understanding of patents in the 18th century and the legal foundations on which it was based. I say haphazard partly because the source is used court records are a little bit sparse for the period and instead they've had to be supplemented with material from law officer reports papers of inventors and parliamentary records. But also haphazard because there probably wasn't any sudden shift in the legal foundation of patents as allegedly heralded by Lyda versus Johnson. Instead the picture that emerges is one where there was a gradual development in the state's specification and by extension the patent itself beginning in about the 1710s and suddenly finished by the 1780s when the contractual conceptualisation of the patent becomes widely accepted and invoked by the judiciary. At the same time we see the disappearance of considerations of the public good and a move away from the patent is simply a privilege. The second half of the paper looks briefly at one of the implications of this development patents and the diffusion of technology. It shed specifications were relatively easy for the public to consult and in the main diligently prepared. This reinforces the argument in the first half of the paper that the specification was an important document in the consideration in which the patent was awarded. Later in the 19th century specifications were regularly published debarring any attempt at the secret working. Thank you very much.