ABSTRACT
The last private Act relating to patent law came into force in 1907, and since that time no patentee has sought a private Act to fix their particular problem. There are probably a multitude of reasons why no such Acts were sought such as the general decline in private business, the increasing role of international treaties, the substantial growth in the number of patents to name but a few. The protection of individual interests was evidenced in the great Statute of Monopolies itself. The private patent Acts in the eighteenth century, in contrast, were largely concerned with extending the right of the patentee either temporally or geographically. It was these patent term prolongation Acts which were first addressed in the general law with a power to extend a patent being granted to the Privy Council. The next "movement", to use Fredrick Clifford's words, was to incorporate companies to work patents.
