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There has been renewed interest in recent years in using prizes and rewards to promote innovation. History has played a central role in public debates in the UK about the merits of such interventions, with the Longitude Prize 2014 being self-consciously modelled on its eighteenth century precursor. Similarly, historical case studies have been used extensively in the scholarly literature in this area. However, it is striking that there has been little engagement with parliament's role in rewarding inventors in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and how this formed part of a broader system of rewards.

This project has four strands. The first strand explores the extent to which a more complete understanding of the historical use of prizes and rewards during the key period of Britain's industrialisation might inform current debates about alternatives to the patent system. The second looks at how Parliamentary rewards shaped important aspects of the patent system, including the doctrine of sufficiency of disclosure. The third looks at how medical practitioners engaged with the reward system. The final strand looks at the grant of rewards in the colonies, using New South Wales as a case study.