Today I've fallen down the Venetian 15thC patents rabbit hole. One of my hunches proving correct: that what we would now call copyright was indistinguishable at the time from a patent.

One thing that's also especially curious is that the early privileges for printing books in England were granted, not with the onerous procedure of obtaining a full patent under the Great Seal, but "by placard". Wondering if there were any inventions privileged by placard...

A few things patented in Venice from the 1490s onwards: the introduction of italics, printed sheet music, and a woodcut technique for producing shaded illustrations instead of just line drawings. Copyright and patents only seem to become distinct in 18thC.

More investigative work into the origins of the English patent system today. Finding another line of transmission via Venetians, coming a little earlier than those granted for printed works: patents for exploration.

The first English patent to an explorer was in 1496 to a Venetian citizen, John Cabot. And the terms were completely different to those granted to the Spanish or Portuguese-supported explorers like Columbus.

Cabot's patent gave him and his sons a monopoly over the trade with any lands that were unknown to Christians. The king then took a 20% cut. They had a few military responsibilities in terms of conquest, but ultimately a commercial deal.

Contrast to Columbus:

Columbus was instead appointed a direct agent of the Spanish crown, with hereditary titles of admiral, viceroy, and governor. He had no monopoly rights, which were kept by the crown, and had to hand over 90% of the profits of trade. He was paid in wages associated with positions.

Columbus was thus more like a marcher lord - a custodian and defender of Spain's new borderlands (should he conquer some). And with military and justrice-dispensing responsibilities.

And the same went for Portuguese explorers.

Curiously, English patents for exploration after Cabot's actually began to resemble the Venetian ones even more. Those granted in 1501 and 1502, for example, to a bunch of Azorean exploers, even had a temporary, 10-year monopoly - the exact duration of the typical Venetian patent

And this shouldn't be surprising, as there wasn't much, if any, distinction then between what we'd now call invention and discovery. e.g. Francis Bacon used Latin word inventio for both the discovery of the Americas and the invention of the magnetic compass.

Columbus himself used invenio - meaning "to find out" - when announcing his own discovery. And, interestingly, Cabot's 1496 patent from the English was ad inveniendum, discoperiendum, et investigandum, translated into English in mid-16thC as "to seek out, discover, and find"

So it seems that "patents for invention" in 16thC England really cover a mix of what would now be called copyright, exploration, and the introduction of new technologies, as well as the creative process of invention itself.