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The same constititutional clause (cited by him) grants Congress the right to create both copyright and patent, but for a moment let's concentrate on patents. The purpose of patent law is to grant inventors an incentive to reveal how their inventions work and ultimately, in the long run, to release those inventions into the public domain. The incentive is a legal monopoly for a limited time. This protects him; it means that during the period of the patent he can reveal it to others without as much concern about it being stolen, which maximizes his ability to capitalize on his work. It reimburses him for his investment in creation of the invention (which can be substantial) and it encourages others to do the same. And by releasing the invention into the public domain after the patent expires, it increases the public good. And indeed this is the very goal intended by the authors of the constitution, which states that the purpose of patent and copyright law is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." The "useful arts" means what we now think of as "engineering". (Organized commercial engineering as we now know it was actually invented by Thomas Edison, long after the Constitution was written -- it is actually his greatest invention of all.) But copyright law is part of this same picture. Copyright doesn't just protect what I guess we could call "esthetic works", it also protects utilitarian works. It's not just Steven King who copyrights his latest novel, it's also that invisible engineer who copyrights a schematic. The reason that copyright expires is so that copyrights on engineering works will expire. A patent covers the concept behind an invention and a copyright would cover a specific implementation of that invention; they both need to go into the public domain eventually to maximize the public good, after being kept as property long enough to reward the creator of the work. But there's no easy way to differentiate esthetic copyrights from utilitarian copyrights, and if the latter need to expire then the former must do so also. It's not that I need unlimited access to the words of "Alice in Wonderland", it's that I need unlimited access to the design for the dynamo and the electric light bulb. For that reason, right now the time limits on copyright are much too long: by the time that copyright lifts on utilitarian designs, they're nearly all obsolete. Fortunately, patent is much more important in this regard than copyright and the duration of patent protection is not yet excessive and probably won't be extended the way copyright durations have been. (discuss) |
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