To Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts
All artists, authors, and inventors today are familiar with the terms copyright, trademark, and patent. For most of these authors and inventors it means one thing: the opportunity to cash in on their brilliant idea. The majority of these creators and inventors will probably prefer to stay hard at work in the lab, library, or office, and leave it to their skilled attorneys (or those employed by their assignees) to navigate through the myriad of Federal laws enacted by Congress to secure the intellectual property rights enjoyed by various individuals and business entities alike. Of course, there are those inventors who can deal with some of the simpler legal matters on their own, but significant inventions, publications, or media creations will always garner a substantial amount of industry attention and clout, all which could fade very quickly without an attorney’s diligent scrutiny. Granted that an attorney’s counsel should always be sought when dealing with the difficult issues and obstacles which inevitably arise on the road to a lucrative licensing or purchase agreement, all inventors and artists alike should take a moment to glance at the history of intellectual property rights in the United States to understand why the Federal law exists in the form it does today.
The Constitution of the United States of America was adopted on September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and ratified by 13th and final state at the time in 1790. Article One of the United States Constitution describes the powers and limitations of Congress, the legislative branch of government which is comprised of our lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives. What many artists, authors, and inventors do not know, even if they understand that Federal law impacts their IP rights, is that the Constitution explicitly empowers Congress with the responsibility of protecting IP rights! Clause 8 of Section 8 in Article One states that “Congress shall have Power 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…” The acquiescence among the founding fathers regarding the inclusion of this clause evinces just how significant intellectual property rights were to the most well-educated men and leaders living in America at the time, including Benjamin Franklin, a brilliant inventor, scientist, and prototype for the hard-working American image that we still value today.
Although we cannot speculate whether the founding fathers could have foreseen the tremendous impact this clause would have on the future of intellectual property rights (especially today in a digital and technologically-superior age), we certainly know that they understood that an individual’s labor could be applied to an original idea of their creation, and that such an embodiment should be protected from unfettered public consumption for a limited time only. By securing intellectual property rights for just a limited time, the founders intended to strike a balance between rewarding innovation and creativity, and ensuring that the public was not prevented from enjoying the fruits of mankind’s innovation indefinitely. Since the Constitution and all of its provisions went into effect shortly after the Constitutional Convention concluded, it has remained clear that the values protected by Clause 8, Section 8 have been a pivotal force in driving American innovation into the future while promoting the nation’s welfare. In the words of Hank Morgan, the protagonist in the great American author Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, “…the very first official thing I did in my administration—and it was on the very first day of it too—was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab and couldn’t travel anyway but sideways and backwards.” Could you imagine a world today without patent laws to prevent unscrupulous individuals or companies from unjustly enriching themselves by stealing the fruits of another’s labor?
Ali Bushra
Law Clerk
JAFARI LAW GROUP®, INC.