It Will Be Noticed How Closely the Copyright Act of 1709-10 followed the Patent System for Inventions, as Preserved in the Statute of Monopolies of 1623

In view of the claims which the Stationers' Company had hitherto made, the terms of the Copyright Act of 1709-10 are significant. In the case of existing books, the Act gave the authors, or if they had transferred their rights (which, of course, they almost invariably had) the then proprietors, the sole right of printing them for twenty-one years and no longer. In the case of new books, the author was given the sole right of printing them for fourteen years from the date of publication, and, if then still living, for one further term of fourteen years. The penalty for pirating was forfeiture and a fine of one penny per sheet, the protection extending only to books registered at the Stationers' Company. It will be noticed how closely the Act followed the patent system for inventions, as preserved in the Statute of Monopolies of 1623. The London booksellers, who must by then have despaired of ever securing the perpetual copyright which at one time they had claimed, had no reason to oppose the grant, enforceable in the Courts, of fourteen years of monopoly power for every new book they bought outright, although some of them subsequently protested when they realised that the second period of fourteen years granted to authors who were still living was the author's property to sell again.

--Arnold Plant, "The Economic Aspects of Copyright in Books," Economica 1, no. 2 (May 1934): 179-180.

The Utilitarians Assumed that the Patent System Was Responsible for the Greater Part of Inventing Activity but They All Failed to Ask Themselves about the Opportunity Costs of Inventing

The economists of the early nineteenth century who considered the question were as definite as Professor J. B. Clark that inventions would practically cease if the patent system were abandoned. Jeremy Bentham was in no doubt at all (Rationale of Reward): " With respect to a great number of inventions in the arts, an exclusive privilege is absolutely necessary in order that what is sown may be reaped.... He who has no hope that he shall reap will not take the trouble to sow." John Stuart Mill's argument was similar. (Principles of Political Economy, Book V., ch. x, s. 4.) As Professor Taussig said, the utilitarians assumed that the patent system was responsible for the greater part of inventing activity. The question which they one and all failed to ask themselves, however, is what these people would otherwise be doing if the patent system were not diverting their attention by the offer of monopolistic profits to the task of inventing. By what system of economic calculus were they enabled to conclude so definitely that the gain of any inventions that they might make would not be offset by the loss of other output? By no stretch of the imagination can the inventing class be assumed to be otherwise unemployable. Other product which is foregone when scarce factors are diverted in this way completely escaped their attention.

--Arnold Plant, "The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions," Economica 1, no. 1 (February 1934): 39-40.