[{"command":"add_css","data":[{"rel":"stylesheet","media":"all","href":"\/sites\/default\/files\/css\/css_rZjCmUBEHftE91DeNru5KqLSSaOmvYzpnCjBdzKdLqM.css?delta=0\u0026language=en\u0026theme=heritage_theme\u0026include=eJwrTi1LzdNPzkksLq7Uy8tPSQUAPMsGtA"}]},{"command":"invoke","selector":null,"method":"openEssay","args":["10000045","\n\n\u003Carticle about=\u0022\/constitution\/articles\/1\/essays\/46\/patent-and-copyright-clause\u0022 class=\u0022node node--type-constitution-essay node--promoted node--view-mode-embedded clearfix\u0022\u003E\n \u003Ch1 class=\u0022title\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan\u003EPatent and Copyright Clause\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003C\/h1\u003E\n\n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-location\u0022\u003E\n Article I, Section 8, Clause 8\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-context\u0022\u003E\n \n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Congress shall have 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....\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-body\u0022\u003E\n \n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere is little direct evidence about the Patent and Copyright Clause\u2019s original meaning. The clause neither represented a legal tradition of great historical and practical significance to the Framers, such as the availability of habeas corpus (\u003Cem\u003Esee\u003C\/em\u003E Article I, Section 9, Clause 2), nor was it one of the great structural innovations of the Constitution that attracted so much attention because of its gravity and novelty. Rather, the clause appears to have been largely an after-thought.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe clause was neither the subject of much debate during the Constitutional Convention nor was it a major topic of discussion during the ratification debates. James Madison, in his wrap-up of \u201cmiscellaneous powers\u201d in \u003Cem\u003EThe Federalist\u003C\/em\u003E No. 43, devoted only a single paragraph to the clause, justifying it both on the need to provide a national, uniform standard of intellectual property regulation as well as on the merits of the protection itself. \u201cThe copyright of authors,\u201d Madison wrote, \u201chas 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.\u201d On this point Madison was mistaken; the House of Lords had decided in 1774 that copyright was not a common-law right, and invention patents had always been granted as a matter of political discretion, not legal right. In the very same breath as he extolled a natural-rights view of intellectual property, however, Madison also struck upon an incentives-based approach, justifying intellectual property regulation by its contribution to the public, as well as private, benefit. Madison concluded, \u201cThe public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of individuals.\u201d He did not address the question of what to do in cases in which the public\u2019s good is not served by extending intellectual property rights.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIn the end, no one appears to have objected seriously to the clause. George Mason and Thomas Jefferson (privately to Madison), along with a few other Anti-Federalists, raised concerns over the granting of state-sanctioned monopolies, which the Framers certainly disfavored as a general matter. But no one took the clause to authorize federal trade monopolies, and such objections were rebuffed by Federalists (in Jefferson\u2019s case by Madison himself) by reference to the value of granting copyright and patents and the need for national uniformity, which no one appears to have questioned. What little direct evidence we have about the circumstances of the clause\u2019s adoption has been of little help in resolving the disputes that have arisen, many of them quite recently, over its meaning.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe clause\u2019s text, too, has been of limited help in resolving modern disputes over its meaning. Although some commentators have developed complex textual arguments about the clause, courts have been wary of applying the many limits potentially to be mined from its wording. In \u003Cem\u003EGraham v. John Deere Co.\u003C\/em\u003E (1966), the Court discussed the limits of Congress\u2019s power under the clause. It declared that Congress may not grant patents \u201cwithout regard to the innovation, advancement or social benefit gained thereby\u201d or \u201cwhose effects are to remove existent knowledge from the public domain or to restrict free access to materials already available.\u201d More generally, the Court opined that the patent system as adopted must \u201cpromote the Progress of\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009useful Arts.\u201d In \u003Cem\u003EFeist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.\u003C\/em\u003E (1991), the Court stated that because the clause permits copyright protection only for creative works, facts cannot be copyrighted. But neither \u003Cem\u003EGraham\u003C\/em\u003E nor \u003Cem\u003EFeist \u003C\/em\u003Einvolved actual challenges to Congress\u2019s power; neither case required the Court to apply the limits it had found in the clause. In fact, the Court has been deferential to Congress. Thus, although the Court has frequently repeated its statement in \u003Cem\u003EGraham\u003C\/em\u003E that \u201c[t]he clause is both a grant of a power and a limitation,\u201d at the same time it has explained that \u201cit is generally for Congress, not the courts, to decide how best to pursue the Copyright and Patent Clause\u2019s objectives.\u201d \u003Cem\u003EEldred v. Ashcroft\u003C\/em\u003E (2003).\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIndeed, with one early exception, the Court has deferred to Congress\u2019s view of its own powers under the clause. For example, in \u003Cem\u003EEldred\u003C\/em\u003E, the Court upheld not only Congress\u2019s extension of the duration of copyrights to almost five times what it was in the 1790 copyright act, it also ruled that the requirement that copyrights be for \u201climited Times\u201d did not prevent Congress from extending the copyright term for a work already under protection. Similarly, in \u003Cem\u003EGolan v. Holder\u003C\/em\u003E (2012), the Court upheld section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (which extended protection to some works previously in the public domain), eliding the Court\u2019s pronouncement in \u003Cem\u003EGraham\u003C\/em\u003E as dicta and rejecting a narrower interpretation of the clause as authorizing only copyright grants that promote the creation of new works. Rather, the Court deferred to Congress\u2019s possible interpretation that the withdrawal of works from the public domain could, on the whole, \u201cpromote the diffusion of knowledge.\u201d The early exception to the pattern of deference was in the \u003Cem\u003ETrade-Mark Cases\u003C\/em\u003E (1879), in which the Court held that the clause did not provide authority for federal trademark legislation. Even that limit was eventually circumvented by Congress\u2019s use of the commerce power as authority for trademark legislation.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EAlthough the history of the clause\u2019s adoption has not featured prominently in the Court\u2019s jurisprudence, history has. Indeed, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (echoing Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) wrote in \u003Cem\u003EEldred\u003C\/em\u003E that, when it comes to interpreting the clause, \u201ca page of history is worth a volume of logic.\u201d In a series of cases, the Court referred to early congressional practice under the clause in interpreting the clause\u2019s reach. In \u003Cem\u003EBurrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony\u003C\/em\u003E (1884), the Court held that protection for photographs was within the clause even though the clause limits copyright to \u201cWritings\u201d and \u201cAuthors,\u201d in part because the first Congress granted copyright protection to other graphical works (such as maps and charts). The Court later extended this logic to allow protection for sculptures as well. Similarly, in both \u003Cem\u003EEldred\u003C\/em\u003E and \u003Cem\u003EGolan\u003C\/em\u003E, congressional practice under the clause figured prominently in the Court\u2019s interpretation, including both the extension of copyright terms for existing works and in the protection of works previously in the public domain.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIt is possible that, given the strongly deferential approach taken by the Court in \u003Cem\u003EEldred\u003C\/em\u003E and \u003Cem\u003EGolan\u003C\/em\u003E, the Court will permit virtually any grant under the clause. The prohibition against copyright in facts contained in Feist, for instance, could just as easily be characterized as dicta as was the prohibition against recapture of the public domain contained in Graham. Should the Court encounter legislation seeming to exceed the clause\u2019s limits, proponents of such measures might rely on other constitutional powers, such as the power to regulate interstate commerce and, because some of new grants might be intended to bring the United States into compliance with international intellectual property conventions, the treaty power (raised but not relied upon by the Court in Holder). Such reliance on other clauses has been the subject of much debate by commentators but little action by courts. The Court\u2019s decision in \u003Cem\u003ENational Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius \u003C\/em\u003E(2012) striking the \u201cindividual mandate\u201d provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 as beyond the power to regulate interstate commerce but upholding them as an exercise of the taxing power suggests that the powers enumerated in Article I, Section 8 are indeed alternative rather than exclusive and that, should the Court\u2019s deference to Congress\u2019s interpretation of the Patent and Copyright Clause run out, legislation pursuant to other powers is a potential avenue.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EJust as proponents of broader exclusive rights have looked to other parts of the Constitution, so too have their opponents. In \u003Cem\u003EHarper \u0026amp; Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises\u003C\/em\u003E (1985), the Court acknowledged the possibility that copyright legislation might result in so heavy a burden on speech as to run afoul of the First Amendment. In\u003Cem\u003E Eldred v. Ashcroft\u003C\/em\u003E, the Court held that copyright term extension did not call for heighted First Amendment scrutiny because \u201cthe traditional contours of copyright protection\u201d include protection for the expressive interests normally guaranteed by the First Amendment, prompting the question of whether some copyright protection (such as the removal of works from the public domain) might deviate far enough from those traditional contours to require heighted First Amendment scrutiny. In \u003Cem\u003EGolan\u003C\/em\u003E, the Court clarified that those \u201ctraditional contours\u201d with First Amendment significance are limited to the idea\/expression dichotomy and the fair use defense and that removal of works from the public domain, for instance, presents no serious First Amendment problem.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EEven given the seemingly broad discretion the Court has given Congress with regard to patent and copyright laws, with the ever-increasing importance of information to the economy, it is likely that constitutional challenges to intellectual property laws will continue.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \n \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--media\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--photo\u0022 style=\u0022background-image: url(\/sites\/default\/files\/Thomas_Nachbar.jpg)\u0022\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--info\u0022\u003E\n \u003Ch4 class=\u0022con-essay-author--name\u0022\u003E\n \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.law.virginia.edu\/lawweb\/faculty.nsf\/FHPbI\/1194120\u0022\u003EThomas Nachbar\u003C\/a\u003E\n \u003C\/h4\u003E\n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--job\u0022\u003E\n Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-tabs\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cul data-tabs class=\u0022tabs\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000045-taba\u0022\u003EFurther Reading\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000045-tabb\u0022\u003ECase Law\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000045-tabc\u0022\u003ERelated Essays\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n \u003C\/ul\u003E\n\n \u003Cdiv data-tabs-content\u003E\n \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000045-taba\u0022\u003E\n \n \u003Cdiv\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBruce W. Bugbee, Genesis of American Patent and Copyright Law (1967)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJane C. Ginsburg, \u003Ci\u003ENo \u0022Sweat\u0022? Copyright and Other Protection of Works of Information after\u003C\/i\u003E Feist v. Rural Telephone, 92 Colum. L. Rev. 338 (1992)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAdam Mossoff, Who Cares What Thomas Jefferson Thought About Patents? Reevaluating the Patent \u201cPrivilege\u201d in Historical Context, 92 CORNELL L. REV. 953 (2007)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThomas B. Nachbar, \u003Ci\u003EIntellectual Property and Constitutional Norms\u003C\/i\u003E, 104 Colum. L. Rev. 272 (2004)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETyler T. Ochoa \u0026amp; Mark Rose, \u003Ci\u003EThe Anti-Monopoly Origins of the Patent and Copyright Clause\u003C\/i\u003E, 84 J. Pat. \u0026amp; Trademark Off. Soc\u0027y 909 (2002)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEdward C. Walterscheid, The Nature of the Intellectual Property Clause: A Study in Historical Perspective (2002)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000045-tabb\u0022\u003E\n \n \u003Cdiv\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EIn re\u003C\/i\u003E Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82 (1879)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBurrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGraham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHarper \u0026amp; Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFeist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGolan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873 (2012)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000045-tabc\u0022\u003E\n \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000037\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003ECommerce Among the States\u003C\/a\u003E\n \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000060\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003ESuspension of Habeas Corpus\u003C\/a\u003E\n \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000089\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003ETreaty Clause\u003C\/a\u003E\n \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000139\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003EFreedom of Speech and of the Press\u003C\/a\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \n\u003C\/article\u003E\n"]}]