Innovations and inventions, today and throughout history

Abstract

Innovations and inventions are the driving force of the economy, and thus of the whole society. This has been true since the beginning of human development to this day. Thereby, different terms are overlapped and often incorrectly used. In the paper these terms are clarified, and special attention has been paid towards inventors and inventions throughout history. It pointed out that the first copyright and patents law was not the Statute of the English Queen Anne from 1710, but the law of the Republic of Venice from 1474. Although the privileges and the protection of inventions had been previously granted in Italy, this of Venice was a written law with precisely defined instructions regarding the recognition of inventions. The paper mentions inventors from history who in fact were not inventors, but unfortunately are still accepted as if they were. A correlation between GDP and the number of patents in a country is established. Issues related to patenting as well as little-known inventors in the recent past of Croatia are presented.