We tend to think of intellectual piracy as a recent phenomenon, but of course humans have been stealing from each other since the first caveman to harness fire saw his or her IP spread without credit like, well, wildfire.
Now comes an unusual historical perspective on intellectual thievery from Doron S. Ben-Atar, an associate professor of history at Fordham University. Although America is seen today as a nation of great invention and an advocate of strong intellectual property protection, the country's early history presents quite a different story.
In fact, the industrial revolution was born on stolen property, the author says. The country, in the form of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and other policy greats condoned the stealing of mechanical and scientific innovations, some of which had been willingly shared with the colonies by England and Europe. Unauthorized reprints from British authors filled libraries and bookstores. European craftsmen were lured to American shores with promises of land, and industrial spies were dispatched across the Atlantic. Treasury Secretary Hamilton's report to Congress in 1791, called "Report on Manufactures," was a proposal for a federal program to engage in industrial theft from other countries on a grand scale.
The great irony (and, from the author's view, hypocrisy) is that while the early American republic was stealing and profiting from European ideas, at the same time it was enacting aggressive patent protections to benefit inventors at home.
Is this important to the modern-day executive? If you worry that China—to take one example—is appropriating the secrets of your best technology in exchange for market access, perhaps the lessons of history can be of value.
In the end, says Ben-Atar, we probably put too much effort in attempting to protect inventions rather than encouraging innovation.