Since the end of the 18th century, in times of proto-industrialization and the industrial revolution in the Austrian-Hungarian empire, the factory authorizations have become a new type of documents. They were accorded by the king and later by the highest administrative office, the Moravian guberniya, to entrepreneurs on the basis of their written request. The purpose of these documents was to ensure law norms in favour of entrepreneurs and their businesses in their dealings with the government offices. Since the beginning there were two types of factory authorizations – the lower type, called simple factory authorization, which was a licence for the business and the higher type, called formal territorial factory authorization, which guaranteed advantages like establishing selling warehouses with goods in the capital cities of Austrian-Hungarian provinces, freedom from having to house the military forces and from recruiting qualified employers and also the freedom from the constant supervision of the guilds over the factory production and the education of the apprentices. The factory authorizations were being accorded until the introduction of the new trade codification inn 1859. The author is concerned with the development of the factory authorizations until their cancellation, with the practice of according these authorizations and with the analysis of their text, using the samples of factory authorizations which were returned to the offices by their owners after their businesses were terminated.