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Benjamins. |
Posted on 12/08/2005 11:07:42 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
Even today, sources on inventions list six by Franklin that are still in active use today. One of those sits in my back hall, cheerfully and economically heating the back of my home – the Franklin stove. Another sits on the bridge of my nose as I write this – a pair of bifocals. But this is about Franklin’s greatest invention, one that the lists never mention because it is mere words, not a physical object.
Franklin made seven trips to Europe, as a diplomat and scholar. He was welcomed into all the learned societies that existed in Europe then. One of the things he learned on those trips was that creative people were being cheated out of the financial benefits of their creations. When the novels of Charles Dickens became popular, printers other than his own simply reset the type and republished the books, without a cent in royalties to the author. When Thomas Paine’s design for a cast iron bridge became known (and remained the standard until the advent of the use of steel in the 20th century), others copied the design without a cent in royalties being paid.
Thomas Jefferson was undoubtedly the nation’s greatest political philosopher, in a group where the competition for that accolade was very high. But Franklin was the nation’s greatest practical philosopher. He recognized that the building of a nation required the creation of a form of fastest possible communication among its parts. So he created the first Post Office, and also served as the first Postmaster. Were Franklin to return, he would recognize in a trice how the Internet works and why it is important. On his second day back, he would have a blog entitled “Poor Richard’s Almanack.”
But even the Post Office, which led inexorably to the Internet, was not Franklin’s greatest invention. He thought about the problem of creative people being encouraged to develop new creations. He understood the importance of good, old-fashioned financial incentives. He suggested to James Madison the following 27-word clause to be added to the powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8. With little debate and no objection, since it came from the respected scientist, it was added to the Constitution:
“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;....”
What is the importance of that clause? The US is only a small fraction of the world’s population. There are other, highly developed nations, with their own great universities. Still, more than three-fourths of all the world’s patents, copyrights, and trademarks are issued annually to Americans.
Is it because Americans are a special breed of human beings, better able to understand complexities and see the shape of the future? Comparisons of American students with their counterparts at all ages in other developed nations should quickly dispel that notion.
No, it is Franklin’s invention of this clause that has caused the explosion of American creativity, which began with the founding of the nation, and has shown no signs of slowing down in the two and a quarter centuries since. By giving a temporary monopoly to inventors like Thomas Edison and Bill Gates, it unleashed their abilities to redirect economic history. It unleashed the abilities of writers and creators like Mark Twain and Steven Spielberg to redirect literary and cinematic history.
(And one of the great diplomatic challenges of our times is to get certain nations to stop stealing the results of that creativity, by stealing the developments and reproducing them – exactly the way everyone was stealing all inventors’ works, when Franklin toured the learned societies of Europe, three centuries ago.)
Where did Franklin get the idea for this powerful clause, the one that is the engine behind the economic miracle of the United States of America? Every other clause in the Constitution has its progenitors in the works of Baron Montesquieu, John Locke, and other political and historical writers known to the Framers of the Constitution. This clause, and this one alone, has no ancestor.
Franklin saw the problem as it existed in the rest of the world. Franklin recognized that providing an economic incentive would encourage inventors and creators. And he also recognized that it must be temporary, “for limited times,” since he was aware of permanent monopolies such as the salt monopoly in the Ottoman empire, which were benefits for preferred supporters of the ruler.
In short, Franklin’s invention of this clause led to the current status of the American economy as the most powerful economic engine in history. And that is no small achievement.
About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
You are tremendously ill-informed about Africa. It is impossible to haved a dialogue with you when you make statements as silly as this one.
I am open to education. Please tell me how my statement is silly.
Hell's Bells...they can't even feed themselves, run a "gubmint", etc etc from middle Africa down...So.Africa has been on the road to perdition since TUTU got the prize.....jmho......
Just as Congress keeps bumping up the time limit to the point where it is nearing a "limit" of 100 years, as a benefit to their preferred supporters in Disney and Hollywood.
I like this article. It told me something important I didn't know - that Franklin's invention of creators' rights was the key to America's idea prosperity.
But what did Bill Gates invent? I thought he took Steve Jobs' "user-friendly" concept of computer operating systems and ran with it.
Excellent! I wish Americans understood the importance of patent and copyright laws, without which no one would spend a dime on R&D for new medicine or technological innovations and without which artists would be unable to make a living as artists (would Pink Floyd have written, recorded and produced Dark Side of the Moon if they would have only sold a handful of copies that would then be downloadable for free by everyone?).
Did Franklin really write that?
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Benjamins. |
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.
See 50. Thanks!
Greatest single invention was the lightning rod. To the topic of this thread, Franklin purposely refused to patent his invention.
Funny how that little phrase has since been strung up and shot between the eyes.
The fire department and fire insurance is another, but those might best be viewed originally as a gang-control device as I understand.
Good point. I'd also say the library is right up there, too, though it's more of an institution than an invention.
Franklin is definitely one of America's treasures, and isn't a shame most kids are only exposed to his kite trick in school and virtually nothing else regarding his views on liberty.
This is my favorite because it stuffs it right up the butt of our leftist educators who won't impress it on our children:
On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor to the Brits
Benjamin Franklin 1766
[Warning against overly generous welfare policies. — TGW]
…I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means.—I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world [but England] where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen?—On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. Repeal that law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday, and St. Tuesday, will cease to be holidays. SIX days shalt thou labour, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.
[From Benjamin Franklin, "On the Price of Corn and the Management of the Poor" (1766), Writings (New York: Library of America, 1987), 587-88.]
Enjoy!!!
The old story goes that as the British burned Washington in August of 1814, the directer of the patent office (located at the site of today's American Art/Portrait museum at 7th/8th E/F streets), Dr. William Thornton (original architect of the Capitol), stood before the British Army and defied them to burn "this storehouse of American knowledge." The actual story is a touch different, but no less heroic. As the British approached the area, Patent Office Director Dr. Thornton scrambled to remove its archives from the office, a converted, unfinished hotel called Blodgett's Hotel, to outside the city. Saving the papers, he was unable to move all the hundreds of models. When a British officer approached, he appealed that the building held artwork and private property. The official British intent was only to burn public buildings, so they left Blodgett's alone. Sadly, the building burned in the 1830s, destroying all the early patents.
Here for a disjointed, but most useful history of patents and the patent office: History of the United States Patent Office. See chapter 9 for development of U.S. patent law and a fascinating argument between Thorton and inventor Robert Fulton over federal supremacy over state patents.
As ever in history, the origins of patents are more obscure than our Billybob's account of Franklin's role in it, which I assume is specific to the wording or its inclusion in the constitution rather than the law itself. British common law and the 1623 Statute of Monopolies were operative in the colonies under British rule. It is clear, however, that patents and copyrights are at the base the great American property rights and prosperity.
Wonderful! I've saved it: This will be a great subject for an essay.
It is the little "m" concept that you seem to malign that makes the big "M" idea conceptually possible. Most socialists suffer from the same Mistake. Sadly, as beneficial as copyrights and patents have been, there is nothing without a few warts. Here are some of the warts:
I have not researched the history of copyrights and patents, but am a bit surprised to learn the concept only dates to Franklin and the mind of one man. Regardless of whether Franklin is the Father Of Imtellectual Protection or not, it is the catalyst that made modern capitalism possible. And if I am correct, that the complexities of determining infringement threaten to completely undermine their usefulness, one cannot help but wonder how capitalism itself will adapt to the transition and what the changes will be.
As an old woman, I thank you for the quote.
The last one, however, (#8) has become wrong. I think there's only a narrow window of time in which this one is true; and I've passed it!
:-D
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