The First Patent in History & How Patents Began

The first ever patent law is usually given as Venice's statute of 1474, the first general rule offering any inventor a limited exclusive right. Earlier one-off grants exist, but they were favours to named people rather than a law anyone could use.

Key takeaways

• Venice, 1474 is the standard answer, because it was a general statute rather than a personal privilege.
• The 1421 Florence grant to Filippo Brunelleschi is often cited as earlier, and it is contested.
• England's Statute of Monopolies 1624 abolished trade monopolies and carved out an exception for true inventions.
• Nepal's own statute is the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965, administered by the Department of Industry.
• Nepal had a registration law about thirty years earlier. Sec. 28 repeals a patent, design and trademark law of 1936.
• Nepal's test is short: Sec. 5 asks whether the invention is new and whether it is useful to the general public.
• A Nepali patent runs seven years and is renewable not more than twice, so twenty-one years is the ceiling.

What was the first ever patent?

The honest answer depends on what you count. If you mean the first law that offered a patent to anyone who qualified, the answer is Venice in 1474 and the field broadly agrees.

If you mean the first individual grant of exclusivity over an invention, the answer is older and much murkier, because rulers had been handing out trading privileges for centuries before anyone wrote a rule.

The difference is not pedantry. A privilege depends on who you know; a statute depends on what you made. Everything modern about patents comes from the second idea.

Why is Venice 1474 the usual answer?

Because the Venetian statute set out conditions rather than names. An inventor who brought a new and ingenious device to the republic and registered it could obtain protection for a limited period against anyone copying it.

Three features of that arrangement survived into every later system: the invention had to be new, the right was time-limited, and it was open to any qualifying person rather than reserved for a favourite.

Venice was also the right place for it. A trading republic full of glassmakers, shipwrights and printers had both the technical activity and the commercial reason to keep skilled people from leaving.

Is the 1421 Florence grant really the first patent?

It is frequently described that way, and you should treat the claim carefully. Florence granted Filippo Brunelleschi a three-year exclusive right connected with a vessel for carrying marble on the Arno.

Historians disagree about what that record establishes. It was a single grant to one famous man, not a general law, and it sits in a long tradition of civic privileges awarded to valuable craftsmen.

So the fair statement is that the Florence grant is an early and well-documented example of the idea, while Venice is where the idea became a rule. An article that flatly names 1421 as the first patent is over-claiming.

What did the Statute of Monopolies change in 1624?

It attacked patents rather than promoting them. The English Parliament passed it to abolish the Crown's habit of selling exclusive rights over ordinary trades, which had become a way of taxing merchants by licence.

The statute swept those away, and then made an exception for grants covering genuinely new manufactures. That exception is the ancestor of modern patent law, which is an odd and useful thing to remember.

The moral has held for four centuries. A patent is a monopoly the law tolerates for a defined reason and a defined period, which is why every system limits its term.

What bargain does every patent system make?

The same one, in different words. You describe your invention clearly enough for other people to understand it, and in return the state gives you a limited period in which others may not use it.

That exchange explains features that otherwise look arbitrary. It explains why applications are written in painful technical detail, why terms expire, and why keeping an invention secret and patenting it are alternatives rather than a combination.

Our guide to how patent protection works in Nepal sets out what the bargain buys you here in practice.

Did Nepal have a patent law before 1965?

Yes, and this is the part most summaries get wrong. Sec. 28 of the present Act is a single line repealing "The Patent, Design and Trademark law of 1936", which tells you plainly that such a law existed.

Sec. 26 goes further. It provides that patents, designs and trade marks registered before this Act commenced, under the 1936 law, are deemed registered under the new Act from the date it came into force.

So Nepal had a registration system roughly three decades before the statute people usually name as the beginning. The 1965 Act was a replacement rather than a first attempt.

What does Nepal's Act mean by a patent?

Sec. 2(a) defines it as any useful invention relating to a new method of process or manufacture, operation or transmission of any material or a combination of materials, or one made on the basis of a new theory or formula.

Two words in that definition carry the weight. The invention must be useful, and the method, process or theory behind it must be new.

The definition is broad in one direction and narrow in another, which is why the question of what qualifies is worth reading separately in what can be patented in Nepal and what cannot.

What does the Department of Industry actually test?

Less than most people assume, judged strictly on the statute. Sec. 5 directs the Department of Industry to investigate whether the patent applied for is a new invention or not, and whether it is useful to the general public or not.

That is two questions. The words "inventive step", "non-obvious", "prior art" and "novelty" do not appear anywhere in the Act's English text, so the familiar three-part test of other countries is not written into Nepali law in those terms.

Treat that as a statement about the statute, not about practice. Examiners still look for earlier disclosures, and an advocate can tell you how the two tests are applied to a real technical file.

Where is a registered Nepali patent published?

In the Nepal Gazette. Sec. 7A(1) provides that patents registered under the Act, other than those which must be kept secret in the national interest, are published by the Department for the information of the public.

That is a genuine trap for anyone reading Nepali IP content quickly. The Industrial Property Bulletin is where trade marks appear, and the word "bulletin" does not occur in the Act at all.

Publication also follows registration on the Act's wording, rather than preceding it. If the sequence matters to your filing plan, put the question to an advocate instead of to an article.

How does the objection window work for a patent?

Differently from designs and trade marks, and the difference is easy to miss. Sec. 7A(2) allows anyone who wishes to see or copy the particulars, maps or drawings of a published patent to do so on paying a fee.

Sec. 7A(3) then gives an objector thirty-five days to complain to the Department, running from the date of seeing or copying the patent. For designs, Sec. 21A runs the same thirty-five days from publication itself; a published trade mark has a 90-day opposition period from Industrial Property Bulletin publication.

So a patent objection clock is tied to inspection, and a design or trade mark clock is tied to publication. Our note on patent disputes in Nepal covers what happens when an objection turns into a fight.

How long does a Nepali patent last?

Seven years from registration under Sec. 8, and then up to two renewals. Sec. 23B provides that a patent may be renewed not more than twice for a period of seven years at a time.

That gives a maximum of 21 years, which is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly, because a reader who assumes the twenty-year term used in many countries will get the arithmetic and the strategy wrong.

The renewal request itself is due within thirty-five days of expiry under Sec. 23B, with a six-month late window on payment of a fine, after which registration is automatically cancelled. Our page on patent renewal in Nepal works through the renewal term arithmetic.

The three rows differ more than a quick reading suggests, and the patent row is the one people most often fill in from another country's rules.

What are the steps if you want a patent in Nepal today?

The mechanics follow the 1474 idea with paperwork attached. Sec. 4 sets out what an application must contain, and the rest is sequence.

1. Keep it confidential. Record who invented what and when, and avoid a public launch, demonstration or post before you file anything.
2. Search what already exists. A search will not be conclusive, and it is still the cheapest way to find out you are second. See searching for patents in Nepal.
3. Name the inventor and the route to title. Sec. 4(1)(b) asks how the applicant acquired the right if the applicant is not the inventor.
4. Describe the process and any theory. Sec. 4(1)(c) and (d) ask for the process of manufacturing, operating or using the invention, and the theory or formula behind it.
5. Attach the maps and drawings. Sec. 4(2) requires them alongside the particulars, and they carry a large share of the technical explanation.
6. File at the Department of Industry, through a representative appointed by power of attorney if you are filing from abroad.
7. Answer the Department. Sec. 5 lets it seek expert advice, and Sec. 6 lists the grounds on which a patent cannot be registered at all.
8. Collect the registration certificate issued under Sec. 7, then diarise the seven-year clock immediately.

Can an international application reach Nepal?

No, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in the whole subject. Nepal is not a party to the Patent Cooperation Treaty, so there is no international application that designates Nepal and no receiving office here.

Checked against WIPO's own depositary table for the treaty, dated 19 May 2026, Nepal is absent from the one hundred and fifty-nine contracting states, alongside several of its neighbours.

The Paris Convention, which Nepal did join, is a different instrument and does something narrower: it supports a priority claim from an earlier filing in another member state. Our page on filing internationally from Nepal explains what that leaves you.

What does the Act ask you to send to the National Archive?

A copy of the design or model of the article manufactured according to the registered patent. That obligation sits in the Act's own words and is easy to overlook when reading a summary.

It is a small provision with a large idea behind it. Disclosure in a patent system is not only a formality for examiners; it is meant to leave a public record that outlives the term.

Whether the Department of Industry currently enforces it, and in what form, is a question for the Department rather than for us.

Common mistakes

• Naming 1421 as the first patent. It is a contested claim about a single grant, not about a law.
• Quoting a twenty-year term. Nepal's ceiling is twenty-one years, reached in three seven-year blocks.
• Looking for patents in the Industrial Property Bulletin. Sec. 7A sends registered patents to the Nepal Gazette.
• Assuming an international filing covers Nepal. It does not, and discovering that late is costly.
• Launching first and filing later. Nepal works on a first-to-file basis in practice, and a public launch is a disclosure.
• Confusing the three rights. A mechanism, an appearance and a name need three different applications.

A worked example

This is an illustration, not a real case. A Lalitpur workshop builds a solar dryer with a new airflow arrangement that cuts drying time for cardamom, and plans to show it at a trade fair next month.

The invention is the airflow method, and that is what a patent would cover. The dryer's casing is an appearance question for industrial design, and the name on the side is a separate trade mark question.

The sequence that protects all three is unglamorous. File the patent application before the fair, file the design before the casing is shown, and check the name against published Nepali trade marks before printing anything.

Nothing in that plan is modern. It is exactly what the Venetian statute asked of an inventor in 1474: bring the new thing to the office before you bring it to the market.

Where can you read the law and the history yourself?

The Nepali statute is published by the Nepal Law Commission, and the office that applies it is the Department of Industry. Both are short enough to consult directly.

For international context, including the treaty tables quoted above, WIPO is the primary source. Definitions of the terms used here sit in our IP glossary.

This page is general information rather than legal advice, and a real invention deserves a conversation about its own facts.

In short

The first ever patent law is Venice, 1474, and the 1421 Florence grant is an earlier example of the idea rather than a settled first. England's 1624 statute then fixed the principle that a patent is a tolerated exception.

Nepal joined that tradition earlier than most summaries admit, with a 1936 law that the present Act repealed, and it now asks two questions rather than three: is the invention new, and is it useful to the public.

The rest is arithmetic and timing. Seven years, renewable not more than twice, published in the Gazette, and filed in Nepal because nothing files itself here from abroad.

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If you have built something and want to know whether it is worth filing, and in which order, tell us what it does and when you plan to show it publicly. Our patent registration service handles the Nepali filing, and the first conversation starts on our contact page.