“The Magna Carta is hardly unique.” that is somewhat true, however the brits took it as their first building bock and kept on going, building and adding to it eating into patent law.
Thus the inventions and patents.
hmm... many of the industrial era patents are also from northern france, the lowland countries and western Germany.
And the patent process dates to 15th century Florence.
The British were key, no doubt, but the entire innovative age from the late 1700s to early 1900s was not an exclusive British process