Historically there has been evidence of sole propriety in Greece and Jerusalem, but in the modern world, the statutory patent system originated in Venice in 1474. The initial patent system required the inventor to communicate the new ideas and inventions to the republic and obtain sole propriety rights for ten years. Inventor Abel Foullon was the first person to receive a patent in 1551. The French monarch Henry II granted this patent to Abel for his device used for calculating the distance between remote objects used in surveys.
