Patent roll

The patent rolls (Latin: Rotuli litterarum patentium) are a series of administrative records compiled in the English, British and United Kingdom Chancery, running from 1201 to the present day.

The patent rolls comprise a register of the letters patent issued by the Crown, and sealed "open" with the Great Seal pendent, expressing the sovereign's will on a wide range of matters of public interest, including – but not restricted to – grants of official positions, lands, commissions, privileges and pardons, issued both to individuals and to corporations.

The patent rolls run in an almost unbroken series from 1201 to the present day, with a small number of gaps, notably during the English Civil War and Interregnum (1641–1660).

[2] The rolls from both sites were reunited at the newly built Public Record Office in the 1850s, and they are now held at the National Archives, Kew, London, where their class reference is C 66.

The system became subject to abuse in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, and was eventually regulated by the Statute of Monopolies of 1624, the first statutory expression of English patent law.