This volume offers new insight into key developments in the history of protection for patent rights during the period 1791-1883. The author presents a detailed examination of the underlying theoretical bases advanced for the protection of patents in various key European countries, and including new material focusing on the political rhetoric of protagonists and opponents of the patent system during the course of the patent abolitionist debates of the 1860s and 1870s. Finally, the book examines in detail the factors which prompted the movement towards international protection of patents, culminating in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of 1883.