I know this is the common belief of the origin of patent law, but is there actually any evidence that this is the case?
As I understand patent law originated as a way for monarchy to maintain control over innovation and intellect:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8
Yes, patents existed before the US Constitution, but the reason the practice was formalized in the US was to promote progress.
For instance the patriot act surely was filled with feel good vocabulary about protecting the public good, net neutrality’s repel “to increase investment”, and I’m sure the coming up “save the children” act that will aim at giving better education and critical thinking to younger generations.
"The utility of this power will scarcely be questioned. The copyright of authors has been solemnly adjudged in Great Britain, to be a right of common law. The right to useful inventions seems with equal reason to belong to the inventors. The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of individuals. The States cannot separately make effectual provisions for either of the cases, and most of them have anticipated the decision of this point, by laws passed at the instance of Congress." Federalist 43
For more background: http://www.copyhype.com/2010/09/copyright-and-the-constituti...
The quote you have from Madison no doubt reflects his real opnion, and well the established view in Britain. But the reason he needed to write it in his letters was that he had to argue against the opposite view among other founders.
You can guess which side Webster supported. And this is the kind of thing I mean about it being a "well-known public justification".
[1]: http://www.thejanuarist.com/noah-webster-father-of-the-ameri...
"Patent" just means "open", in this case openly declared, not secret.
Ideally "patenting" an invention provides an alternative to an inventor hoarding a trade secret that dies with him or his company. The quid pro quo for the public good of making a technology open knowledge is a temporary government granted monopoly.
The ideal and reality seem to have parted company a long time ago...
I always imagined it was more along the lines of encouraging inventors to open-source their technologies, by giving them greater legal defenses for doing so.
To avoid the "apple does research, and archives it secretly, lost forever if it doesn't reach market" scenario; instead we now see Apple publishing anything and everything it thinks it can lay claim on, to tune of absurd claims today, but in (80) years, the research is still available to all
Patents are troublesome, in particular software patents, and in particular in the US due to the way patent trolls work.
But that is an entirely different discussion. Different groups and people behind it, different power struggle. Let's focus on copyright.
Copyright. The way the US enforces it and exerts influence over it--which is what the article is about--makes it a worldwide problem.
Another weird thing is, even from the "copyright everything" camp, it must seem that the US is disproportionately represented+enforced. But you don't hear them about that. There's a few reasons for that, larger non-US studios/distributors often have deals with US studios/distributors. But those deals are mainly with the US, so on the whole it is still disproportionately represented.
I kind of wonder, but have never seen any clear evidence for this so this is just speculation: Even outside the US, a very large percentage of media (pop songs, films, TV series) are of US origin. At least in the Netherlands: Domestic films are considered "niche", the hit charts are dominated by US pop songs and the majority of TV series broadcast and/or watched are US-based. Of course a large driving force behind this phenomenon is that (in NL) we all speak English, but how do you think it became that way? It's not education; We also learn German and French in school, but the Dutch people speak way better English than they speak the language of our neighbours (Germany), let alone French. And such is the case for a large part of Europe at least (I won't try to speak for places that I don't have much knowledge about).
That's some strong cultural influence. It is power. The US probably wants to keep it that way, it's an amazing way to influence thought in western culture everywhere. Anyway it is power, so there must be forces that want to keep it.
But the anti-piracy movements seem kind of antithetical to that, right? They are restricting distribution. So how does that add up? There doesn't seem to be a (public) fight between the "global cultural influence" forces in the US and the "content industry" forces. Again, I'm just speculating, but I can think of a few reasons: It's not about restricting distribution per se, it's about controlling distribution, and control is power. Another way is that by restricting supply (and with a lot of show), it is perceived as valuable, which legitimises. But that doesn't seem to be enough, considering the enormous amount of influence and power on cultures and thought all over the world, the US has control over. Restricting supply is just a trick and controlling distribution is not enough, there must be a force that pushes, too. But what is it? (I'm probably overlooking something extremely obvious because the alternative would be a world-wide psyops-campaign).
I mean, unless US pop-culture is just that much superior, that good, that everybody wants it, everywhere. But that also seems unlikely (and I don't mean that by hating on pop-music or anything, because non-US pop-music is really just as "shit", the "main stream" is still art IMHO, even when I don't like it myself, and that's a whole other discussion again).
IMO both the patent and the copyright laws, at least in the US, are broken. The original goal was good: encourage individual inventors to make technology that the whole society will benefit from at a price of some limitation on use by society for a short period of time. In the current system, "the whole society will benefit" part does not work because time limits are too high -- at the modern technology pace, in 20 years most inventions are obsolete.
I think the best way to fix it is to drastically shorten the time the invention is protected, which would require major compromises. Unfortunately, the discussion now seems very polarized: it seems to be "all information should be free" against "copyright everything and it needs to last longer, longer, longer" as major camps with little in the middle.