Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? - Tom G. Palmer

harvard Journal of Law ~sYPubiw Policy [Vol. US
means that force can be used against another to stop him from
taking certain steps with his body; enforcement of a property
right in an invention means that force can be used against another
to stop him from using his hands in certain ways, In each
case, an intellectual property right is a claim ofa right over how
another person uses her body.
As the pro-liberty journalist William Leggett, a leader of the
Jacksonian Loco-Foco party and editor of the New York Evening
Post, wrote,
We do not wish to deny to British authors a right; but we do
desire that a legal privilege, which we contend has no foundation
in na~turalright, and is prejudicial to ‘the greatest
good of the greatest number,’ should be wholly annulled, in
relation to all authors, ofevery name and country. Our position
is, that authors have no natural right ofproperty in their
published works, and that laws to create and guard such a
right are adverse to the true interests of society. 43
Leggett opposed copyright and patent rights for two reasons:
First, he argued that intellectual property rights stifled the free
spread of ideas and damaged the public interest. 44 Second, he
argued that such rights were in reality statutory monopolies
that infringed upon the rights of others to the ownership of
their own bodies:
Our position that an author has an exclusive natural right of
property in his manuscript, was meant to be understood only
in the same sense that a mechanic has an exclusive natural
right of property in the results of his labour. The mental
process by which he contrived those results are not, and cannot
properly be rendered, exclusive property; Since the right
of a free exercise of our thinking faculties is given by nature
to all mankind, and the merefact that a given mode ofdoing
43. W. LEOGETF, supra note 2, at 397.98. Interestingly, Leggett and Spooner not
only agreed on the abolition of slavery, but also agreed that, if intellectual property
rights are indeed natural rights, then they should not be limited in duration. Accord.
ing to Lessett,
An authoreither has anaturalandjust right ofproperty in his production,
or he has not. Ifhe has, it is one not to be bounded by space, or limited in
duration, but, like that oftheIndian to thebow andarrowhe hasshaped from
the sapling and reeds of the unappropriated wilderness, his own exclusively
and forever.
Id. at 398.
44. Iftheprinciple of copyright were wholly done away, the business of authorship,
we are inclined to think, would readilyaccommodate itselfto the change
ofcircumstances, and would be more extensivelypursued, and with more advantage
to all concerned than is the case at present.
Id. at 394.