[p2p-research] Thomas Jefferson Decided The Hemp Brake Was Too Important To Patent

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Thomas Jefferson Decided The
Hemp Brake Was Too Important To Patent via Techdirt by Mike Masnick on
12/30/09
We've had plenty of discussions about Thomas Jefferson's views on the
patent system. He is, clearly, the father of the patent system in the
US. While he was incredibly skeptical of the idea of granting any
monopolies originally, he did come around to accept patents in very
limited circumstances, and when he oversaw the patent system, he was
careful to make sure that the downsides of such monopolies were
limited. Separately, for many years, I've heard the story of how Ben
Franklin purposely decided not to patent his stove invention,
stating: "As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others,
we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of
ours; and this we should do freely and generously." However, I had not
heard of a similar story involving Thomas Jefferson refusing to patent
certain inventions he came up with as well. Reader jprlk points us to a
recent Straight Dope column, which is mostly about George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson's exposure to marijuana, but there is one
interesting part about how Jefferson refused to patent his "hemp brake"
patent, because he found the invention to be "too important": Jefferson
invented a better "hemp brake" to separate the fibers from the stalks,
something he thought was so important agriculturally that he refused to
patent it. Combined with the Franklin quote, this is quite telling. In
both cases, they realized that the invention could be a lot more useful
if it were not limited. This goes against claims by patent supporters
that (1) an invention is not a "real invention" if it's not patented
and (2) the patent system is necessary for better dissemination of
ideas. It's nice to see (yet again) that Thomas Jefferson, despite
overseeing the early years of our patent system, clearly was quite
skeptical of the actual benefits of such a system.

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