The Lets-clean-up-that-mess pattern

After this first phase, the IP generation lifecycle sometimes halted (as with the decline of Venetian power or in the German thirty years war), but where political development avoided disastrous downturns the growing jungle of patents evoked some counterreactions, such as when patents on gambling cards were banned in a court decision (case of monopolies 1603). In England a clean-up on trade patents (''Statute of Monopolies 1623'') finally decided to grant trade patents only to the first and true inventor of a new invention - Machlup [19] considers this document the Magna Charta of inventors. However, in addition to the reaffirmed inventors' IP also the printers' IP remained untouched because it was so useful to the both government and the publishers' guild:

''William Crosskey points out that Philip and Mary incorporated the Stationers' Company to set up a mode of regulating the English printing trade that would facilitate the efforts of the Romish clergy to stamp out the Protestant Reformation. But the motives of the stationers were of a less exalted kind. Thus, Elizabeth, relying on the stationers' self-interest, confirmed the Charter to turn the stationers to support the English, rather than the Romish, church, and the Stationers' Company became, in turn, the instrument of the Stuarts against the Puritans, in the early seventeenth century; the instrument of the Puritans, against their royalist enemies, when the Puritans came to power; the instrument of the royalists against the Puritans, after the Restoration; and, for a brief time, the instrument of the triumphant Whigs, after the glorious Revolution, of 1688. But through all these vicissitudes, the stationers themselves steadfastly remained, what they had always been, eminently practical men; and they consistently protected their monopoly.'' [23]

Of course, the stationers chose a more noble wording to defend their monopoly ''Books (except the sacred Bible) are not of such general use and necessity, as some staple commodities are, which feed and clothe us, nor are they so perishable, or require change in keeping, some of them being once bought, remain to children's children, and many of them are rarities only and only useful to only very few, and of no necessity to any, few man bestow more in Books than what they can spare out of their superfluities ... And therefore property in Books maintained among stationers cannot have the same effect, in order to the public, as it has in other Commodities of more public use and necessity.'' [26]. Naturally they also mentioned that market regulation would result in less confusion. The ''piracy'' metaphor (for copying without permission) also can be traced back into the 18th century [11].

A recent instance of the ''Lets-clean-up-that-mess'' pattern can be found in the EU Green Paper [6, p. 19] asking for the ex post legalization of European software patents after some 13,000 software-related inventions had been granted and case law been spoken against the wording of the European Patent Convention (Par 52).