From Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
It is important to note, in this connection, that a discovery cannot be patented, only an invention. A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because: (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission. He can copyright the book in which he presents his discovery and he can demand that his authorship of the discovery be acknowledged, that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it—but he cannot copyright theoretical knowledge.
The distinction between discovery and invention is key here.
Intellectual Property comes in two contexts here. There is the discovery of what intellectual property is as a scientific or philosophical discovery, and inventions, be they product that meet guidelines which have been objectively established.
As indicated, a copyright on book presenting a discovery protects the book, but not the discovery. The copyrights on Ayn Rand’s books protect the book, not the theoretical knowledge contained therein. The theoretical knowledge contained therein is freely available to anyone who buys or is given the book, providing that the mental effort required to comprehend it is exercised.
In regard to grasping the material, as with all human knowledge, error is possible on behalf of the grasp of the reader, or even in the grasp of the author putting it forth.
Here’s a passage from Why Should Business Leaders Care about Intellectual Property? — Ayn Rand’s Radical Argument
Rand could easily explain why one cannot draw a fundamental distinction between a rightful claim to a farm and a rightful claim to an invention. The seeming simple physical transformation of fallow land into a value, a farm is a direct result of the fact that man is a rational animal whose mind is his basic means of survival.
In the case of the farm, it is an individual identification that a particular parcel of land has ideal soil to which to apply his agricultural knowledge for the purpose of growing food. It is only this conceptual identification and the resulting goal directed action that makes the parcel of land of value. It is at this point the land is something that the farmer is acting to gain and/or keep.
Before this conceptually directed action, it was only land, a simple descriptive fact of the world. After the conceptual identification and appropriate physical action by an individual this descriptive fact is converted into a moral value. The land becomes a farm, a source of life sustaining food for the farmer and for the men with which he trades the fruits of his labors.
The same union between conceptual and physical labor that produces a farm in which you can claim a right to property in that land, also produces the mechanized reaper, the cotton gin, and all the other patented inventions used on that farm in the 19th century that were then protected under the patent laws.
It is the fact that both a farm and an invention arise from a valuing rational mind. Both are the rightful property of the man who creates them in order to live.
Rand’s metaphor in Atlas Shrugged of a machine was “the frozen form of a living intelligence”, and “the frozen form of a mind’s ingenuity.”
Note the power of this the metaphor vs. “mixing labor”. There is no confusion here about what makes the machine a machine, the intelligence that is imbued in it.
The farm took the discovery that seeds sprout, that they grow better in a nutrient rich loam than in desert sand, removing weeds allow the crops to grow rather than be choked out and combined them into a moral value. These activities subordinate themselves to Locke’s “mixing labor” metaphor. By exploiting discoveries of nature, Locke makes his case that the mixing of man’s intellectual knowledge of seeds, soil, weeding, watering, etc., and putting for the physical application of that knowledge converts a tract of land into a form of intellectual property, or moral value, known as a farm, and that it is rightful his by virtue of the facts involved.
Prior to the industrial revolution, activities organized around discoveries such as these gave rise to farming, mining, blacksmiths, and folks who climbed trees to pluck banana’s and coconut when they were in season. At that time, these types of activities were what most people had to apply themselves to for basic survival.
In this sense, a farm is not an invention, it is an application of knowledge of discoveries about laws of nature, principles and facts of reality.
Gary North asked a question some time back, making the observation that for much of human history, the per capita growth was essentially flat until the 1700’s(? of the cuff recollection). From that point forward the per capita growth has progressed at about 3% per annum. He asks why?
Several lectures available from ARI suggest that the rediscovery of Aristotle preceded this change. Rand attributes the industrial revolution to man’s mind being unshackled from by the same rediscovery.
Newton identified properties of light and also wrote the Principia. The periodic chart of the elements was organized from discoveries of teh time. While the intellectual property of understanding may have been put forth in proclamations, books, etc., these were not the same form of intellectual property Locke argued for, and Bentham effectively undermined.
Invention, as put into English law at the time, were not things found naturally occurring, i.e., were not discovers about the nature of nature. Over and above the discovery of “what is”, and invention is the discovery of “what can be”. This is not a discovery that light consists of many wavelengths, that bodies of matter move with the discoveries of mathematical relationships to one another, or the different elements of matter can liquefy or solidify at different temperatures, have different electrical properties, etc., but can be made to serve different moral purposes such as mechanically accurately keeping time to aid in navigation, automatizing the manual weaving the thread into cloth—the production of moral values that as Rand put in Galt’s speech, “The standard of living of that blacksmith is all that your muscles are worth; the rest is a gift from Hank Rearden.”
The difference between a discovery and an invention is the difference between that which is and that which can be. This is the difference between eking out an existence as a menial laborer and pioneering an industrial concern such as Dow Chemical, Carnegie Steel or Rockefeller Oil.
Specialization of labor, brought about by the industrial revolution, also brings into play a role of finance (something distinctively missing from the interplay off-shooting from Bentham’s Utilitarianism be it the collectivist ideal of the greatest good for the greatest number, or the minimization of conflict, often played upon). Drawing upon Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal again:
Since intellectual property rights cannot be exercised in perpetuity, the question of their time limit is an enormously complex issue. If they were restricted to the originator’s life-span, it would destroy their value by making long-term contractual agreements impossible: if an inventor died a month after his invention were placed on the market, it could ruin the manufacturer who may have invested a fortune in its production. Under such conditions, investors would be unable to take a long-range risk; the more revolutionary or important an invention, the less would be its chance of finding financial backers. Therefore, the law has to define a period of time which would protect the rights and interests of all those involved.
