The patent Protection and Making of the Global Technological Divergence with reference of British Patent System

Abstract

The main argument of this paper is that British patent institutions were not merely legal devices for rewarding inventors but central to a historical process through which early industrializers consolidated technological leadership and generated long‑run North–South divergence. Using evidence from the British Industrial Revolution, it shows that as mechanization spread through textiles, transport, steam power, metals, chemicals and communications, patents evolved into reasonably effective instruments for protecting inventions, organizing commercialization and codifying technical knowledge, while sectors such as agriculture and shipbuilding remained relatively weakly protected. A sectoral patent table demonstrates that patenting was concentrated in high‑return, high‑spillover industries, where exclusive rights allowed firms to capture rents, reinvest in new technologies and maintain a lead over the developing countries. The analysis interprets these historical patterns through a North–South model of innovation and protection, in which the North conducts R&D and enjoys temporary monopoly power over new products while the South imitates, licenses or is excluded depending on the strength of intellectual property rights. The main contribution is to link concrete British historical evidence and sectoral patent concentration to modern North–South intellectual property models, showing how patents played a dual role: supporting invention and diffusion within pioneering economies while also shaping an international distribution of technological rents that favored early industrializers and constrained latecomers’ opportunities to build technological capabilities