Industrial property
intellectual property applied to industry
Industrial property is one of two subsets of intellectual property (the other being copyright), it takes a range of forms, including patents for inventions, industrial designs (aesthetic creations related to the appearance of industrial products), trademarks, service marks, layout-designs of integrated circuits, commercial names and designations, geographical indications and protection against unfair competition. In some cases, aspects of intellectual creation, although present, are less clearly defined. The object of industrial property consists of signs conveying information, in particular to consumers, regarding products and services offered on the market. Protection is directed against unauthorized use of such signs that could mislead consumers, and against misleading practices in general.
In United States legal terminology, industrial property refers to patented goods, trademarks, copyrights, and industrial designs that are owned by a business, and that the business may exclude others from using.
History and context
Early patents
The earliest patents were recognitions for exclusive exploitation or exclusive practice of new processes or creations; which are considered to have been granted in Europe in the fourteenth century. Several possible origins are attributed to the first patents: the Republic of Florence, the Republic of Venice or, according to some authors, the Kingdom of England. In all cases the main motivations seem to have been the introduction of "new arts", the attraction of more skilled craftsmen and the transfer of technology in order to reduce imports and increase the exports of their territories.
The industrial property researcher Maximilian Frumkin considers that the first invention patent was granted in Florence in 1421 to the famous architect Filippo Brunelleschi, to whom the Florentine state granted an exclusive right, with a duration of three years, to build and use an apparatus of his invention to transport heavy loads on the Arno and other rivers, excluding any other person from such uses under penalty of burning any invention other than the architect's in case of contradiction of the prohibition. The invention was a boat intended to transport the marble needed for the construction of the dome of the Florence Cathedral, Brunelleschi's greatest work.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Industrial property” is intellectual property applied to industry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Industrial, property and intellectual, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2750057. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1421.
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This entry incorporates text from “Industrial property” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.