Intellectual Property
and the Ownership of Ideas:
Thomas Jefferson on Ideas
Excerpt from Thomas Jefferson's letter to Isaac
McPherson, August 13, 1813,
It has been pretended by some, (and in England
especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their
inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their
heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of
property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a
natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those
who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural
right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal
law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally
and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but
when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable
ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress
of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation
of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive
and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible
than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking
power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long
as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself
into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself
of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less,
because every other possesses the whole of it. He
who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening
mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening
me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe,
for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition,
seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when
she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening
their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move,
and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as
an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but
this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the
society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a
fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until wecopied her, the
only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right
to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes
done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally
speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more
embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the
nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England
in new and useful devices.
"This gets to the heart of Jefferson's philosophy
of life: that genius exists to amerliorate the conditions of humankind,
that eveyone, not just social elites, should share in the fruits of life,
that it is the diffusion not the hoarding of good ideas that brings about
human happiness, and that government exists to serve the commonwealth rather
than the individual. In Jefferson's ideal world there can be no patents,
copyrights, and trademarks. What Daniel Boorstin has called the discoverers
are all philanthropists."
-- from Thomas Jefferson:
The Man of Light by Clay S. Jenkinson
Thomas Jefferson redesigned the plow and released
his idea (design) into the public domain asking no compensation for his
ingenuity. I find it a personal challenge to create something and
not try to protect my "intellectual property." But I try to remind
myself, that society will benefit more as a whole from my ideas, than I
will as an individual. Ergo, the greater good comes from me not hoarding
my knowledge, but instead making it accessible to others. Which in
some small way is why I have this website.
-- Scott Toste
|
|
