A historical timeline can be laid out that represents various milestones of inventive activity. Similarly, a separate timeline can be laid out for inventive rights. These are not coincident, since, for example, the inventiveness of the use of various tools and technology throughout the New Stone Age (about 4000-8000 BCE) were not necessarily matched with corresponding rights of invention or of protection of intellectual property, particularly since this neolithic period preceded the use of writing systems . Nevertheless, the eventual establishment of laws protecting the rights of individuals to their "intellectual property" generally parallels the modern progress of technology and the arts and their commerce.

This first lesson will generally describe a few milestones that have led to today's laws that protect the intellectual output of individuals in modern society. It is important to distinguish various types of "intellectual property" (or "industrial property" as alternatively used, e.g., in Europe). Patents are only one type of "intellectual property". Other types of intellectual property include industrial designs, utility models, trademarks, service marks and copyrights. However, this course focuses only on patents.

Note that whereas this lesson describes various early laws protecting the intellectual property rights of individuals in certain specified countries, most notably Italy and England, comparable early laws in other parts of the world, e.g., in various parts of east and south Asia, Africa, the Middle East, may or may not have existed in some form as well. Archeological and other studies of early history have yet to uncover this information. Even the concept of guilds, which conferred some protection of the intellectual output of individuals, has a long history going back thousands of years, much of which is yet to be deciphered.

Please visit siberkhem.blogspot.com for further information (see 20071207).