re: #194 victor_yugo

Because the Constitution explicitly forbids perpetual legal monopoly on creative works:

“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…” (Art. I, Sec. 8)

The key is that the government is enforcing that ownership. Coca-Cola does their own enforcement on the recipe, and they do a pretty good job of it. When the government does that enforcement, it is time-limited; when it expires, “ownership” passes to the public at large. That’s the “promotion of the arts and sciences” part in the Constitution.

Correct. The underlying thinking here is that, in return for a limited period of protection enforceable through the government, your works eventually revert ownership to society, which can then use them freely. As an additional benefit, at least in the case of patents, this encourages ongoing creativity, a desire to keep inventing new things that that qualify for the special legal protection - and the profitability it confers - offered by patents. Copyright is a bit fuzzier in this last area, but the principle still applies. Both inventors and society derive benefit from the arrangement over the long run.