Thomas Jefferson on Patents and Freedom of Ideas

6 October 2006

Started reading Unbounded Freedom and ran in to a great excerpt from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to Isaac McPherson in 1813 about the nature of ideas. It's not the first time I've run across it, and like my Ben Franklin quote it has seen a lot of use in patent discussions, but it's the kind of thing I think needs to be found on movingtofreedom.org. Looking at more of the letter:

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 anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied 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.

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 August 1813
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html

That uchicago.edu web page has a copyright notice, but surely this must be in the public domain by now, right? (This is one of the things that bugs me about copyrights--people claim them for everything.) It was all one chunk of text, so I took the liberty of inserting paragraph breaks.

Practical. Do patents encourage or stifle innovation? Do "monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society"? Are they necessary or will people invent anyway? I think they will invent anyway.

Inspiring. "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's the right stuff.

by Scott Carpenter on 6 October 2006 at 4:30 am
permalink | comments (10) | filed under free culture
tagged: ideas, intellectual monopoly, patents, quotes

Comments

Scott -

I *completely* understand how you feel. This passage from Jefferson blew me away, too. I have to admit, I do not remember reading it before. How is it possible after nearly 200 years that these words are still so true today?

I had to think a lot after reading this. Many walks. It was a eureka moment for me. This passage and Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture ( http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/ ), Raymond's "Hacker Attitude" points 1 and 4 ( http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html ). Those three influences came in a rapid fire succession for me, amongst other readings and happenings, and I could almost feel a shifting of gears.

We live in an awesome time! Good stuff. Thanks for sharing.

Posted by Amy Stephen on 16 October 2006 at 8:50 pm

Thanks, Amy. I briefly considered if I should post the excerpt or not, since it has already been discussed so much, but then I realized the more people see and think about it, the better. It really is amazing, the ideas that have been with us for so long that become more relevant every day. I agree: we live in interesting times.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 17 October 2006 at 5:40 am

[...] Precisamente porque la industria (que en este caso es la del cine, pero puede ser igualmente la de la música, las editoriales, o cualquier otra que obtenga beneficios a base de vampirizar mediante intermediarios el trabajo de uno o varios creadores reales) es la que ha desarrollado la idea, dudo que eduquen a los niños en la idea de que los conceptos abstractos, los pensamientos y en general el fruto de la mente humana en su forma pura no se puede poseer. Ahora, si son tan americanos como dice su nombre (Motion Picture Association of America) seguro que no tienen problema en analizar y estudiar algún texto de Thomas Jefferson: 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. [...]

Posted by Las penas del Agente Smith » El buen Boy Scout no copia on 23 October 2006 at 1:40 pm

[...] Scott is a writer for the Free Software Magazine. I “met” him after commenting on one of his articles in Digg and visiting his site. Scott also discovered Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Isaac McPherson in 1813 and blogged on it, too, just like I had done. [...]

Posted by Scott Carpenter Moving to Freedom at Amy Stephen on 10 November 2006 at 1:25 pm

[...] A couple of recent stories on photography of certain items being ‘banned’ - Cory Doctorow on a Magritte exhibition’s hypocrisy, and Jen Graves on a sculpture of which “photography is prohibited” - highlight what makes me tense up and want to scream about so much of the ‘intellectual property debate’: photons are no more regulable than bits. And bits, like knowledge itself, aren’t regulable either (Cory again). Just as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me, so he who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine (Jefferson, via Scott Carpenter). [...]

Posted by No photography allowed at fulminate // Architectures of Control on 22 January 2007 at 9:58 am

this sucks!!!!!!!!!
and im supposed to do a reacherch report on him ughhhh! boring!!!!!!!

Posted by Dwight Schrute on 7 November 2007 at 1:31 pm

Tough noogies, Dwight.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 7 November 2007 at 5:28 pm

Great quote...thank you!

Whenever a man shares his idea it becomes everyone's.
But that sharing is assumed to be his choice right? It is not some doctrine of "must" do for the "collective".

This is where many people get "murky" in their thinking.

Can we assume that the work I do for another is a contract between he and I and no other? Can we assume then that the pay I receive for my work is mine and no other's?

Then why do we allow an Income Tax without choice and can be taken with deadly force?

Aren't the profits made from one's own labor his to hold and to do with as he wishes?

Shouldn't he be able to save and invest without taxation by force without choice?

But once the invention is shared it is every man's..

Then once I spend the product of my labor it becomes"everyman's" through the amount that I consume.

http://www.fairtax.org

Please visit http://www.fatheromalley.com and get click throughs to many more...

Love to all,
Father O'Malley

Posted by Father OMalley on 11 August 2008 at 6:16 pm

Today we obviously lack genuine democrats like Thomas Jefferson. And that's not just my opinion. Look what famous peers said about Jefferson:

http://www.tributespaid.com/quotes-on/thomas-jefferson

Posted by Dawood on 20 November 2009 at 3:54 am

"That uchicago.edu web page has a copyright notice, but surely this must be in the public domain by now, right? (This is one of the things that bugs me about copyrights--people claim them for everything.)"

It's pretty ironic that the U of Chicago would be trying to claim a copyright to a writing that expresses opposition to the notion of natural intellectual property rights.

Posted by Ken on 22 February 2010 at 3:17 pm

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