Here's some excerpts:
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the concept of property rights goes back (at least) to the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments. Most other religions and cultural traditions also have deep-rooted convictions about property rights.On the other hand, patent and copyright - protections for products of the mind - are a relatively recent phenomenon. The first patents and copyrights were issued in Venice in the 16th Century. At the time, Venice was a declining city-state that was slowly losing its trade hegemony to Florence and other rising powers. It devised copyrights, and then patents, as a means to attract the best and brightest of Europe to Venice. The Venetians offered authors and inventors a unique arrangement: the State would grant them a limited period of exclusivity that guaranteed a profit for their labors; in return they agreed to release their creations to the State once the grant had expired. It is important to note that this agreement was to be backed up with State power - those who encroached upon the grant of exclusivity would be punished by the State.
The Venetian innovation was extremely successful, and it quickly spread throughout Europe. However, patents and copyright were gradually perverted by the absolute monarchies of France and England. In England they degenerated into a "spoils" system used by the King to reward loyal cronies and rich benefactors. One needed a royal grant of copyright to operate a printing press for any purpose, and this led to a clever form of private censorship: by ensuring that all printing presses were in the hands of loyalists, the King could disavow any direct involvement in efforts to suppress dissenting opinions. Patents were used in a similar manner to ensure that trade and commerce were controlled by those loyal to the King.
In return for their continued loyalty, publishers (the primary holders of copyright) began to assert and demand ever more rights. In particular, they began to assert that authors ceded their rights to the publishers in perpetuity. They began to demand natural law property rights.
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In 1709 Parliament passed the first modern copyright law, the Statute of Anne, which vested a 14-year statutory copyright in authors. The publishers vigorously fought this statute, first asking the judiciary to invalidate the statute, and then by seeking a judicial declaration that this act merely supplemented a pre-existing natural law copyright that authors could cede to publishers in perpetuity. However, in 1744 the House of Lords rejected this assertion, held that no natural law copyright existed, and that copyright was a purely statutory right created for a purely utilitarian purpose.
To America's Founding Fathers, all of this was recent history, they were very much aware of this debate, and it influenced their crafting of both the copyright clause and the First Amendment. In particular, the Founding Fathers:
- Placed ultimate control over patent and copyright in the hands of the legislative branch - not the executive.
- Stated that patents and copyrights were to be granted for "Limited Times" - a crucial distinction between a statutory right and a natural law property right.
- Established a purely utilitarian purpose for these statutory rights: "To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
By clearing stating a public purpose for patents and copyrights, the Founding Fathers took them completely out of the realm of natural law property rights.
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