PRIMARY SOURCES

ON COPYRIGHT

(1450-1900)

Royal declaration on privileges granted to inventors, Paris (1762)

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France: Mss. Fr. 22073 n°72

Citation:
Royal declaration on privileges granted to inventors, Paris (1762), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

Back | Record | Images | Commentaries: [1]
Record-ID: f_1762

Permanent link: https://copyrighthistory.org/cam/tools/request/showRecord.php?id=record_f_1762

Full title:
Declaration by the King, concerning trade privileges. 24 December 1762

Full title original language:
Déclaration du Roy concernant les Priviléges en fait de Commerce. Du 24 décembre 1762

Abstract:
A primary source on the 'brevets d'invention' (patents for inventions), to use the term endorsed by the decree of 25 May, 1791, might not quite seem to warrant inclusion among fifty primary sources on copyright. However, as in Great Britain, the protection of inventions, and even of their inventors, is part of a common history, regarding both the means of protection - privileges - as such and the justifications of these. It is very revealing to contrast the alternative definitions of privileges, especially in the positive legislation of the time - i.e. that of the 1762 Déclaration, before the book trade regulations of 30 August, 1777. In addition, the booksellers themselves grounded some of their developments on such a comparison (see, in particular, Gaultier's memorandum: f_1776). The 1762 act was the first general attempt to regulate the trade in inventions and to protect on more solid grounds inventors and their eventual assignees. Previously, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the granting of privileges to inventors was more discretionary, sometimes agreed outside of any professional guild regulations. Normally, the award and duration of the royal favour, as in book trade privileges, was related to the invention's public utility, but also to the fact that it was actually contributing something new. After a presentation of these privileges, the commentary will discuss and compare the criteria involved (which were not always respected consistently), and juxtapose the 1762 purview with the 1777 book trade decree, thereby allowing us to compare the status of inventors with that of authors at the end of the ancien régime.

1 Commentary:
commentary_f_1762

Bibliography:
N/A

Related documents in this database:
1790: Sieyès' report

Author: N/A

Publisher: G. Simon

Year: 1762

Location: Paris

Language: French

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France: Mss. Fr. 22073 n°72

Persons referred to:
De La Vrillière, Louis Phélypeaux, Duc
Louis XV
Simon, Pierre-Guillaume

Places referred to:
Paris
Versailles

Cases referred to:
N/A

Institutions referred to:
Parlement of Paris

Legislation:
N/A

Keywords:
French Revolution
authors' remuneration
duration, prolongation of privileges
guild regulation
guilds
industrial revolution
interest groups
inventions
lobbying
monopoly
novelty
patronage
perpetual protection
privileges, French
property theory, authors' property
public good
registration
transferability
utility

Responsible editor: Frédéric Rideau


Copyright History resource developed in partnership with:

Our Partners

Copyright statement

You may copy and distribute the translations and commentaries in this resource, or parts of such translations and commentaries, in any medium, for non-commercial purposes as long as the authorship of the commentaries and translations is acknowledged, and you indicate the source as Bently & Kretschmer (eds), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) (www.copyrighthistory.org).

With the exception of commentaries that are available under a CC-BY licence (compliant with UKRI policy) you may not publish individual documents or parts of the database for any commercial purposes, including charging a fee for providing access to these documents via a network. This licence does not affect your statutory rights of fair dealing.

Although the original documents in this database are in the public domain, we are unable to grant you the right to reproduce or duplicate some of these documents in so far as the images or scans are protected by copyright or we have only been able to reproduce them here by giving contractual undertakings. For the status of any particular images, please consult the information relating to copyright in the bibliographic records.

Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) is co-published by Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, UK and CREATe, School of Law, University of Glasgow, 10 The Square, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK