Thomas Jefferson Quotes
... no one possesses the less because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me receives it without lessening me, as he who lights his candle at mine receives light without darkening me.
When Secretary of State, Jefferson ran the first American Patent Office. The Patent system was originally and educational program, not an intellectual property program. Inventors would keep all their technological secrets to themselves. The idea behind the original patent system was to give an inventor a limited monopoly on profiting from his invention in exchange for sharing his information and techniques with his countrymen—thus improving the technological competency of the entire society. The very first patents were available for public inspection for that reason. And even today, copies of patents are available easily for almost no cost. And few American ideas worked as well as our early patent system. Through its educational role and technology transfer, America came from technological nowhere to being the pre-eminent inventing nation of the world. The balance between public access to invention and innovation and preservation of some rights to the creator of intellectual property is key to modern development.
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, 3rd President of the United States (Democratic Republican, VA), Statement advocating the openness of patents and inventions, Quoted in John H. Lienhard, Radio Program, Engines of Our Ingenuity, Episode 792: Jefferson and Technology
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Even before being an independent country, America had two contrasting and contradictory views of patents—the one that Franklin herein states and the one what was written into the constitution that argued that by granting patents inventors would be incentivized to make their trade secrets public if they had an exclusive monopoly on if for a period of time. Both of these philosophies towards patents have coexisted since then. There was a Federal patent system for those who wanted to use it, and for those who did not, they could enter the invention to the public domain as Franklin urged. Arguably, we have obtained the best of both approaches. Millions of patents have been filed and granted and yet some of the most important inventions have followed the Franklin approach. See the quotes about the Salk Polio Vaccine—{29154} and {29187} and the quote on "open source" computer software—{29676}. With billions of dollars being made by protected software in the early 21st century, over half of the world's computers were operating on systems that was public domain and without charge as just one large example of the Franklin philosophy still coexisting.
There was the beginning of a major debate in the advanced countries over the notion of copyright to protect authors and knowledge being a public property. The solution for America and most nations was to allow copyright protection for the specific expression of the knowledge but not the knowledge itself. You cannot copyright an idea or the laws of science—just the way they are expressed. Therefore all are free to discuss the knowledge and also write about it.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
