Law / Copyrights / Patents Timeline Outline

The Diptych Document Format
(198 CE)

The Transition from Papyrus to Parchment
(Circa 300 CE – 700)

Costs of Professional Writing Measured by the Normal Length of a Line in a Verse of Virgil
(303 CE)

Constantine's Religious Toleration Does Not Apply to Jews
(October 18, 315 CE)

Biblical and Roman Law: Precursor of Footnotes; Early Uniform Pagination
(Circa 350 CE – 450 CE)

Composition of the Babylonian Talmud
(Circa 490 CE – 542)

Production of Manuscripts and Interest in Books Begins in Germany in the Last Third of the Eighth Century
(Circa 770)

1302 Manuscript Codices or Fragments Survive of Texts Written before 800
(799)

Origins of the Term Algebra
(Circa 830)

More than One Million Charters Survive from the Period of Norman Rule in England
(1066 – 1307)

Perhaps the Oldest State-Supported University
(June 5, 1224)

The Pecia System
(April 4, 1228)

Confirmation that Printed Textiles Exist in Europe
(1234)

Early Origins of the Star Chamber
(1275)

The Earliest Surviving Statute Regulating the Paris Book Trade
(December 8, 1275)

A Venetian Ordinance on the Production of Eyeglasses
(April 2, 1300)

Scribes in London First Organize
(September 23, 1373)

The Only Formal Roman Treatise on Geography
(September 25, 1471)

Probably the First Printed Civil Law Book
(January 26, 1475)

The First Known Author's Copyright
(September 1, 1486 – May 21, 1487)

The First Book Printed in the Ottoman Empire
(December 13, 1493)

The First Record of a Privilege Granted for Music Printing
(May 25, 1498)

The First Legal Bibliography
(1522)

Concentrating the Entire Printing Business in the Members of the Stationers Company
(May 4, 1557)

Consolidating and Amplifying the Regulation of Printing in England
(June 23, 1586)

Among the First Records of Litigation over an Invention
(1607)

A Decree of the Star Chamber Concerning Printing July 11, 1637
(July 11, 1637)

Abolition of the Star Chamber Stimulates Publishing
(1641)

The British Government Attempts to Re-Establish Censorship
(June 16, 1643)

"For Books are Not Absolutely Dead Things; but Doe Contain a Potencie of Life . . . ."
(1644)

The First Book on the Detection of Forged Documents
(1666)

Laws of Book Production and the Book Trade
(1675)

Foundation of Palaeography and Diplomatics
(1681)

The First Printed Facsimile of a Manuscript
(1697)

Baroque Anatomy and Plagiarism (?)
(1698)

The Statute of Anne: The First Copyright Statute
(1709)

Foundation of the Greatest Museums of Florence
(February 18, 1743)

George II Donates the "Old Royal Library"
(1757)

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
(November 15, 1777 – March 1, 1781)

The First Patent for Stereotyping
(1784)

The Constitution of the United States
(September 17, 1787 – June 21, 1788)

The Bill of Rights
(September 25, 1789 – December 15, 1791)

Predictor of the Cylinder Press
(1790)

The U.S. Patent
(April 10 – July 31, 1790)

The First Papermaking Machine
(1798 – 1801)

The First Patent for Paper Recycling
(April 28, 1800)

Senefelder 's Earliest Technical Description of the Process of Lithography
(June 20, 1801)

The Dickinson Cylinder-Mould Papermaking Machine
(1809)

The Ludd Riots
(November 11, 1811 – January 12, 1813)

Manufactured for Over a Century
(1813 – 1817)

The First Rotary Press
(1813)

Printing 900 to 1,000 Perfected Sheets per Hour
(December 24, 1814 – February 1816)

Key Steps in Speeding up Cylinder Printing
(1816 – 1818)

The First Machine for Type Composition
(1822)

Invention of the Dandy-Roll in Machine Papermaking
(1825)

Invention of "Illuminated Printing"
(1838 – 1840)

The "Pianotype" : The First Composing Machine That Was Actually Used
(1840)

Invention of Anastatic Printing
(October 1841 – October 25, 1845)

Application of Jacquard Punched Paper Technology to Typesetting Machinery
(1849)

The Public Libraries Act of 1850
(August 14, 1850)

Shepardizing
(1875)

Bell Invents and Patents the Telephone
(March 10, 1876)

The Berne Convention
(September 9, 1886)

The Monotype is Invented
(June 7, 1887)

The First Silent Movie Copyrighted in the U. S.
(January 9, 1894)

The Standard Work on Hot-Metal Casting and Composition
(1916)

Blue-Print for The Third Reich
(1925 – 1927)

Creation of the FCC
(1934)

Authorship of the ENIAC Design
(September 27, 1944)

Probably the Oldest Interactive Electronic Game
(1947)

Von Neumann's First Draft Bars Patenting the ENIAC
(April 8, 1947)

Eckert & Mauchly Apply for a Patent on the Stored-Program Computer
(June 26, 1947)

Patenting the Mercury Acoustic Delay-Line Electronic Memory
(October 31, 1947)

Sperry Rand Cross-Licenses Patents with IBM
(August 21, 1956)

Pioneering Computer-Assisted Legal Research
(1960)

The First Software Patent
(1960 – November 20, 1968)

The ENIAC Patent
(February 4, 1964)

Full-Text Interactive Search Service
(1967)

Mead Corporation Purchases Data Corporation
(1968)

UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970
(November 14, 1970)

The First General Patent on the Microprocessor
(December 1970)

Lexis is Introduced
(1973)

The ENIAC Patent is Invalidated
(October 19, 1973)

The Endangered Species Act of 1973
(December 28, 1973)

Foundation of the Biotechnology Industry
(1974)

The Privacy Act of 1974
(May 1974)

U.S. v. IBM is in Trial
(May 19, 1975)

An Open Letter to Hobbyists
(February 3, 1976)

Probably the First U. S. Legislation against Computer Crimes
(1978)

The Basis for Cellular Telephone Technology
(May 1, 1979)

The U.S. Withdraws its Antitrust Case Against IBM
(January 8, 1982)

Early Form of Digital Rights Management
(1983)

The First Commercially Available IBM PC Compatible ROM Bios
(1983 – May 1984)

A Computer's Operating System Can be Protected by Copyright
(1983)

The 1970 UNESCO Convention is Implemented in U.S. Law
(January 1983)

Junk Faxes are Outlawed
(1991)

One of the First U.S. Cases in Cyberspace Law
(October 29, 1991)

Perhaps the First Law Review Symposium Dedicated to Cyberspace
(1993)

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
(1994)

Selling Wine without Bottles
(March 1994)

Steve Jackson Games v. U.S. Secret Service
(October 31, 1994)

LexisNexis Exceeds One Billion Documents
(1996)

The WIPO Copyright Treaty
(December 20, 1996)

The Internet is Entitled to the Full Protection Given to Printed Material
(June 26, 1997)

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act
(October 12, 1998)

Domain Names are Property
(1999)

Napster is Founded
(June 1, 1999)

Continuing to Print the British Parliamentary Papers on Vellum
(November 2, 1999)

Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
(November 29, 1999)

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
(2000)

"Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction"?
(December 14 – December 21, 2000)

Safeguarding Internet Security in China
(December 28, 2000)

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of Commons in a Connected World
(2001)

An Injunction Against Napter to Prevent Trading of Copyrighted Music
(March 5, 2001)

The BitTorrent Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Protocol
(July 2, 2001)

Rhapsody is Launched
(December 2001)

Creative Commons
(December 2002)

Regulations.gov is Launched
(January 2003)

Privacy of Medical Records and Electronic Data
(April 14, 2003)

The First U.S. Standards for Sending Commercial E-Mail
(December 16, 2003)

"Peer to Patent"
(July 14, 2005)

Moratorium on Scanning Books
(August 11, 2005)

The Open Content Alliance is Founded
(October 25, 2005)

Hepting v. AT&T
(January 31, 2006)

Publishing Patent Filings on the Web
(September 26, 2006)

Authors, Publishers and Google Reach "Landmark Settlement"
(October 28, 2008)

"Google and the Future of Books"
(February 12, 2009)

Piracy of Internet Filtering Software?
(June 13, 2009)

Amazon Sends Orwell eBooks Down the "Memory Hole"
(July 16, 2009)

" A Library to Last Forever" ??
(October 9, 2009)

The Amazon Kindle is Hacked; eBook Digital Rights Management Cracked
(December 23, 2009)

Instagram is Founded
(October 2010 – December 17, 2012)

Towards a New Digital Legal Information Environment
(November 9, 2010)

$1,300,000,000 Verdict in Software Copyright Infringement Suit Partially Vacated
(November 23, 2010 – September 1, 2011)

Universal Music Group Donates a "Mile of Music" to the Library of Congress
(January 10, 2011)

The Impact of Automation on Legal Research
(March 4, 2011)

Google Agrees to Acquire Smart-Phone Maker Motorola Mobility
(August 15, 2011)

Michael Hart, Father of eBooks & Founder of Project Gutenberg, Dies
(September 6, 2011)

Major Websites Go Dark to Protest Web Censorship Legislation
(January 17, 2012)

U.S. Justice Department Sues Major Publishers Over the Pricing of eBooks; Amazon Wins
(April 12, 2012)

Google Has 67% of the U.S. Search Market and Collects 75% of U.S. Search Ad Dollars
(November 4, 2012)

U.S. Bill to Stengthen Privacy Protection for Emails
(November 29, 2012)