Abstract
August 11, 1598.—Edward Darcy's playing card patent, dated Aug. 11, 1598, which was an extensthn for twenty-one years of an earlier grant made to Ralph Bowes in 1588, for the sole making, importation, and selling of playing cards, was the cause of the famous law-suit known as “The Case of Monopolies”, in which the common-law distinction between a patent for an invention and a monopoly in restraint of trade was clearly laid down. “Where any man by his own charge and industry or by his own wit or invention doth bring any new trade into the realm, or any engine tending to the furtherance of a trade that never was used before and that for the good of the realm, that in such case the king may grant to him a monopoly patent for some reasonable time, until the subjects may learn the same, in consideration of the good that he doth bring by his invention to the commonwealth, otherwise not.” The grant, the avowed motive of which was to prevent able-bodied persons who might go to the plough employing themselves in the art of making cards, was declared contrary to the law, and the patent void.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Calendar of Patent Records. Nature 124, 250 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124250b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124250b0