Abstract
For historians of the patent system, the first half of the eighteenth century provides little of use - with no reported decisions that clearly relate to a dispute over a patent grant. The option presented here is to examine a non-patent decision, in a related field, that sheds light on the assumptions and perspectives that underpin the legal discourse of the time. Mitchel v Reynolds (1711) shares similarities with the early seventeenth-century patent law; however, there were also differences that make it look more "modern". In terms of the former, there was still the tendency to discuss patents for invention as only an example of the general Crown right to grant charters and there remained an implicit acceptance of the mercantilist approach to the economy. Differences between the eighteenth-century law and that of the seventeenth-century include an acknowledgement of the perceived role of patents in encouraging ingenuity and also of the individual's freedom to contract. A nuanced understanding of Mitchel v Reynolds, then, allows for a perspective of the assumptions of the system in the "dark ages" between the Statute of Monopolies and the reforms of the nineteenth century.