The Romans introduced the concept of ownership of movable or immovable property but rarely recognized the exclusive rights of authors or inventors with respect to their creations or inventions. It took the Venetians to enact in 1474 the first statute providing for patents for inventions.
England enacted the landmark Statute of Monopolies in 1624 which took away from the Monarchy the exclusive rights to exploit inventions and lodged them on the first inventor.
The United States adopted a patent system based on the Statute of Monopolies which was in turn adopted by the Philippines later on.
Republic Act No. 165, the Patent Law, which took effect on June 20, 1947, established an independent patent system for the country. The Philippines acceded to the Paris Convention for the protection of industrial property as revised in Lisbon on September 27, 1965. On December 14, 1994, the Philippines ratified the WTO Agreement which includes the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
On January 1, 1998, Republic Act 8293 (The IP Code) took effect.
Source: Primer on the Law on PATENTS by Intellectual Property Foundation (IPF).