Patent length and the value of inventions in Brazil in the nineteenth century

This paper presents a new set of historical patent data ranging between 1830 and 1882 in Brazil, during its first patent law issued in 1830. According to this law, each patent term had its length determined by the quality of each invention, that is, its importance or social value. We analyze the economic factors related to the social value assigned to inventions, measured in years of monopoly granted by the government. Furthermore, we explore what kind of inventions arose and what were the most valued ones on an agricultural nineteenth-century economy, based mainly on coffee exports. We focus on the patent length established by law. Like the first US patent law, Brazil did not set a single term for the validity of the patents. According to the law, a patent could have the duration of 5 to 20 years, according to the quality of the invention. The original draft of the Bill did not mention quality, but the importance and value of the invention. So, this paper uses the length assigned to the patent in years as a proxy for the social value of the invention.We describe the database composed of patents from 1830 to 1882, constructed based on Original Ministry Decrees that granted those patents. Then, we propose several categories for these patents and apply a model considering these categories to analyze if a pattern concerning the social value emerges. Finally, we bring our conclusions, showing their possible relation to the structure of a export-led economy in the nineteenth century in Latin America.