Aspects of patent and copyright law might be better understood by a greater appreciation of a shared history between patent and copyright law. Such an appreciation leads to the recognition that, ostensibly, the resolution of the question of literary property could have sparked a reshaping of patent doctrines in the late eighteenth century and that in turn those patent doctrines could have had a reciprocal influence upon an important aspect of English copyright law of the nineteenth century. While these connections are speculative, when patent history and copyright history are put in overlay, the connections emerge as plausible ones.