Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the 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.While much is written both before and after the Eldred case about the operative significance of this language, that is, the extent to which this language constrains or limits, there is no doubt about its philosophy. Copyrights and Patents exist to promote the progress.
As a mere aside, it is amusing that the phrase "Sciences" refers to writing of authors, and "useful Arts," to inventions. The term "sciences," as used there, referred to the general technique of writing -- that is the capacity of authors to be authors, as opposed to the subject of their authorship.
The basic idea here is that promotion of the progress is accomplished, at least in part, by giving writers incentives to write and inventors and incentive to invent. We can debate until the end of the day whether the Copyright is necessary for authors to author -- clearly we had great writing before the Statute of Anne, but that isn't the point. The question is whether the Copyright promotes authorship and, in particular, the incentive for smart people to learn to pen beautiful writings, as opposed to going to less important endeavors, like going to law school.
The progress is promoted, in the case of copyright, by giving an exclusive right to the copying, republication and distribution of the writings. This gives publishers an incentive to publish and advertise works, an incentive to fund author's writings, and hence an incentive for authors to be come good authors. Progress is promoted yet another way: if the law is done right, authors are given broader incentives to distribute their works, disseminating the examples of their art for review by others.
And in that review, the others learn to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, and thus the progress is promoted. That is, so long as the monopoly does not reach so far as to stunt the growth of the next generation of artists, which brings me to the second part of this survey of IP Fundamentals: Incremental Improvement versus Pioneering Invention.
Posted by Werdna at May 1, 2004 03:16 PM