The Patent System of the Netherlands in a Belgian Mirror, 1817-1869

This article is an institutional study of the patent systems of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and its successor states Belgium and the Netherlands in the nineteenth century. The patent law of 1817 gave the state wide discretion to accept or refuse patents and to customize their duration, fees, and terms on a case-by-case basis. Through an in-depth reconstruction of the patent system’s administrative process, I demonstrate (1) how this system developed informal rules of procedure in its initial years, and (2) how the law after Belgium’s independence fared differently from 1830 onward in each successor state. While in an industrializing Belgium the patent system became widely used and increasingly codified by the state, culminating in an 1850s reform, in the Netherlands slow industrialization coincided with the state neglecting the patent system, which led in 1869 to its abolition there. The institutional study thus provides a new perspective on the Dutch patent abolition, and a foundation for future research on the Dutch and Belgian cases to study the relationships between patents, industrialization, and innovation.