Ayn Rand's Views
Ayn Rand, founder of Objectivism, also supported copyrights and patents, noting in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:
| “ | Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind. Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and of physical effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different types of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort required to perform unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end, what the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values; these laws protect the mind's contribution in its purest form the origination of an idea. The subject of patents and copyrights is intellectual property. ... Thus the law establishes the property right of a mind to that which it has brought in existence. | ” |
She also argued that the term should be limited:
| “ | If it were held in perpetuity, it would lead to the opposite of the very principle on which it is based: it would lead, not to the earned reward of achievement, but to the unearned support of parasitism. It would become a cumulative lien on the production of unborn generations, which would ultimately paralyze them. Consider what would happen if, in producing an automobile, we had to pay royalties to the descendants of all the inventors involved, starting with the inventor of the wheel and on up. Apart from the impossibility of keeping such records, consider the accidental status of such descendants and the unreality of their unearned claims. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Libertarian Perspectives On Intellectual Property
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“Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.”
—Ayn Rand (1905–1982)
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—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Your views are now my own.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist.
In conversation, after having taken a strong position in an argument and heard a complete refutation of his position.