John Of Utynam's Argument Of Monopolies

As early as 500 BCE, human has already had the consciousness of patent protection. Historian found some interesting words in the Sybaris, an Ancient Greece city, “encouragement was held out to all who should discover any new refinement in luxury, the profits arising from which were secured to the inventor by patent for the space of a year.” (Anthon，1841) That means if you create something in luxury, you could get profit from the sale in one year. With the development of society, people began to use paper to record patent. In 1449, John of Utynam got a letter patent. This patent gave him a twenty-years monopoly which helped him to protect his new glass-making process. At that time in England, this glass-making process was unknown (Science Thomsonreuters). The first patent law was established in Venice in 1474. In this patent law, they mentioned in a limited period of time the creator owned certain rights. If someone infringes creators’ rights, they would be accountable for creators’ damages (The Business of Patents).
In 1624, England established the “statute of Monopolies”.
According to this law, King is the only one who can issue the letter patents to those inventors. In this law, it also created a duration of patent right protection, 14 years (Pila, 2001). The authentication from King could keep the patents’ formality. The duration of patent right protection ensured inventors’ interests.
Before the War for Independence, many colonies had their own patent laws. Those patent laws indirectly influenced the U.S. Constitutions. In the U.S. Constitutions, we could find “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries” (History and Sources of Intellectual Property Law). It described inventors’ rights, and it also mentioned the patents had a duration. Those words became the basis of the first U.S. Patent
Act.
Due to the complex historical reason, China did not have a patent law until April 1, 1985 (Lin, Wood, & Jang, 2004). However, this patent law might not take hold in China for a long time. For many foreigners who has a business in China. They might think the Chinese do not care about the copyrights as well as western people. Therefore, we could always find some news describe the Chinese manufacturers infringe others’ patent. However, some people think we could find some reason from Chinese culture. Over 2000 years ago, Confucius developed his Confucian ideology, which has already shaped Chinese people’s worldview, social ethic, political ideology, and their way of life. In the traditional culture, people thought imitation and copying was a way to flatter and respect the famous people and bigwigs. Therefore, sometimes Chinese people will put social value ahead of proprietary intellectual property rights (Lciaramella, 2012). In recent years, Chinese government enhanced the protection of patent rights, and amend patent law. That has achieved a good legislative result, but it still has some demerits.