to individual petitions." It is also significant that the "legislation focuse[d] on protecting and rewarding individual inventors, in contrast to monopolies reserved to organized groups (guilds)."

This alternative view is hard to reconcile with the large shift in patenting activity observed after 1474. As observed by Allan Gomme, former librarian of the UK Patent Office, "there was, then, a regular practice of granting patents in Venice which began about 1475..". See also Statistics, below. The majority