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The Ridiculous History of Intellectual Property, Part 1: The Ancient Past · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer
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Speaker 1: and our own legal beagle, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: He's so litigious, he's always just suan Willie and or
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Speaker 2: nilly left and or right now.
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Speaker 1: That's just you know, did you You know? I'm Ben
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Speaker 1: and that's uh. And you guys are gonna behave yourselves
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Speaker 1: because we're all friends here. I never sued no one,
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Speaker 1: not never, not know how. I don't even know where
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Speaker 1: to start. I read recently, just over this past week,
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Speaker 1: a story of about a guy who was a judge
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Speaker 1: who sued a family dry cleaner for fifty four million
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Speaker 1: dollars because, according to him, they lost a pair of
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Speaker 1: his pants. And this guy was so litigious that he
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Speaker 1: actually lost his job. My favorite line I almost texted
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Speaker 1: it to you guys, was they had to pause. This
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Speaker 1: is a quote from the article. They had to pause
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Speaker 1: court proceedings because the guy apparently got so emotional when
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Speaker 1: he was questioning himself about losing his pants that he
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Speaker 1: rucked down in tears.
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Speaker 2: Were the pants on him? At the time the dry cleaned. No,
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Speaker 2: were they magical pants? I'm confused, Yeah, lucky pantaloons? What well,
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Speaker 2: fifty million, that's that's absurd.
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Speaker 1: Surely he did not win. No, I mean, were they white? Unclear?
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Speaker 1: They I think they were just regular khakis. But the
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Speaker 1: thing is that guy was he did lose his job
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Speaker 1: as a judge, which he could have, because he weaponized
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Speaker 1: all his legal knowledge to just torture this family so
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Speaker 1: much that it's just like a mom, dad, and kid.
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Speaker 1: And he tortured them so much with appeals and YadA, YadA, YadA,
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Speaker 1: that they almost moved back to South Korea. So we know,
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Speaker 1: we know that you can be a bad faith actor
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Speaker 1: in the in the world of courts. And we're going
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Speaker 1: to talk today about something this this might end up
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Speaker 1: being a two parter, something that I think has fascinated
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Speaker 1: all of us, and it's something we started running into
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Speaker 1: a lot in the world of podcasting. I don't run
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Speaker 1: into this in my day to day life, you know, honestly.
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Speaker 2: It was it was in through podcasting and colleagues of
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Speaker 2: ours and you know, various deals and things like that,
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Speaker 2: that I started hearing the term ip thrown around and
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Speaker 2: for the longest time, I didn't really know what it
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Speaker 2: meant and never really bothered to ask. But it's a
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Speaker 2: real umbrella term, you know, and it refers to a
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Speaker 2: whole lot of stuff, innovation, software, engineering, entertainment. It's a
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Speaker 2: real catch all term that basically refers to the way
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Speaker 2: you can protect and or commodify and or sue on
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Speaker 2: behalf of an idea, and the way people treat ideas.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Is such
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Speaker 1: an umbrella term. Intellectual property. I had the idea, this
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Speaker 1: idea is mine. But this applies to so many other things.
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Speaker 1: The manufacturing process for pharmaceutical substances, the algorithms used to
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Speaker 1: assess your credit score, even words like Google, or the
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Speaker 1: brand or brand logos like the Golden Artist McDonald's. I'll
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Speaker 1: never forget my first brush, my first serious brush with IP,
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Speaker 1: getting into legal trouble for it. I got a pretty
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Speaker 1: strident letter when I was working on that animated show
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Speaker 1: for kids called Stuff of Genius about inventors. And you
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Speaker 1: guys have heard this story. The people who own Frisbee,
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Speaker 1: the trademark Frisbee, they are hardcore about it. If it's
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Speaker 1: not a Frisbee brand Frisbee, it can only be called
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Speaker 1: a flying disc. I'm out here trying to like tell
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Speaker 1: eight year olds about how Frisbees came to be and
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Speaker 1: I got to cease and desist or a C and
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Speaker 1: D in the business.
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Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, and it will you know, we'll probably get
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Speaker 2: into this a little bit. But it's also sometimes a
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Speaker 2: brand or a trademarked you know, concept can become so
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Speaker 2: ubiquitous that it becomes a catchall tournament of itself, like
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Speaker 2: Xerox as they come, you.
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Speaker 1: Know, sort of.
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Speaker 2: I mean, it's not even that people do that much
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Speaker 2: anymore because who holds paper? But you know, there was
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Speaker 2: a time where you'd say, xerox me this, you know,
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Speaker 2: document or whatever, and that would just refer to making
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Speaker 2: a photographic copy, a photocopy. I guess it's the but
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Speaker 2: Xerox is obviously the biggest brand, you know, in that world,
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Speaker 2: or you know, in certain parts of the country, Soda
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Speaker 2: pop is a coke we live in that part of
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Speaker 2: the country, or yeah, yeah, Frisbee exactly are BANDI next?
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Speaker 2: These are proprietary eponyms, and yeah, once that stuff comes out.
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Speaker 2: The problem is, no matter how many people you take
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Speaker 2: to court, you can't stop billions of people from just
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Speaker 2: collectively deciding to say, we google something when we Internet search.
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Speaker 2: You know, I encountered something that is pretty hilarious, and
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Speaker 2: I don't I don't know if this is actually protectable
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Speaker 2: IP or if this was actually registered as a trademark.
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Speaker 2: But are you guys familiar with the movie Bird Demic,
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Speaker 2: Shock and Terror.
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Speaker 1: I'm not.
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Speaker 2: It is a really really, really low budget hilarious It's
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Speaker 2: like like in the in the Zone of the room
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Speaker 2: the Tommy wisso filmic atrocity that has become kind of
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Speaker 2: a cult sensation. It's in that kind of vein of
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Speaker 2: just you know, so bad. It's kind of amazing in
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Speaker 2: and of itself that it even exists. It's got like
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Speaker 2: it's you know, it's a love story that seems like.
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Speaker 2: But then and also these like killer birds enter the scene,
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Speaker 2: and if you watch the trailer, the birds are just
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Speaker 2: clearly like badly photosh kind of after effects on and
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Speaker 2: they're like hovering while their wings are flapping and they're
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Speaker 2: kind of hovering in place. But in the trailer language
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Speaker 2: they refer to it as are the directors referred to
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Speaker 2: as the Master of Quote. The romantic thriller which is
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Speaker 2: followed by a trademark symbol. I don't know if that's
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Speaker 2: if that's sufficiently creative enough to warrant a trademark. We're
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Speaker 2: going to get into what some of the criteria are
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Speaker 2: for getting a trademark or you know, the ideas have
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Speaker 2: to have a certain amount of originality, they have to
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Speaker 2: just have a certain amount of novelness, et cetera. And
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Speaker 2: then there are other laws that can protect these you know,
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Speaker 2: rights of the intellectual property stakeholders. But then there are
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Speaker 2: also laws that keep it from getting a little too
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Speaker 2: you know, protected right.
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Speaker 1: And those laws are going to surprise you along the way.
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Speaker 1: At some point, I'm going to figure out the etymology
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Speaker 1: of legal beagle. But but but for now, yeah, let's
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Speaker 1: be aspirational. But for now, I think no. Maybe one
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Speaker 1: of the things are fellow ridiculous historians need knew from
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Speaker 1: the jump is that the concept of intellectual property or
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Speaker 1: IP is super duper old, way older than you might assume.
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Speaker 1: All the way back to five hundred BCE in a
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Speaker 1: Greek colony named Sibaris or Siberis, there were these chefs
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Speaker 1: who got who were granted legal monopolies for a year
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Speaker 1: at a time over the creation of certain dishes, so
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Speaker 1: they would say, look, you're the only guy who can
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Speaker 1: make the fig far fig nugan here, which was you know,
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Speaker 1: as we all know huge in Siberis at the time.
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Speaker 1: It's not a cookie, it's fruited cake. Everyone knows that.
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Speaker 2: There's a really cool book that collects a lot of
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Speaker 2: this history, and it's called The Genesis of American Patent
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Speaker 2: and Copyright Law by Bruce Bugby, which is a great name.
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Speaker 2: He highlights a couple of interesting cases, one involving Vitruvius,
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Speaker 2: who is said to have essentially codified the idea of
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Speaker 2: intellectual property theft. During a literary contest that he oversaw
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Speaker 2: in Alexandria where he was one of the judges, Truvius
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Speaker 2: essentially called out, you know, put on blasts some other
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Speaker 2: poets that he referred to as being false because he
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Speaker 2: believed that they had stolen the words and turns of
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Speaker 2: phrase of other writers, of other poets.
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Speaker 1: Which would be super easy at the time, because you know,
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Speaker 1: the only way to transmit things would be word of
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Speaker 1: mouth or writing it down and physically transporting it. So
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Speaker 1: these people could be stealing stuff and the audience would
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Speaker 1: never know unless someone brought it to their attention the
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Speaker 1: other times. Because in this book that you mentioned, Bugby
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Speaker 1: talks about three different cases of IP law and antiquity.
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Speaker 1: The second and third are also from Roman times. And
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Speaker 1: even though there's not a specific Roman law we can
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Speaker 1: point to about IP, we do know that Roman legal
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Speaker 1: experts discussed this in depth, you know, like, okay, if
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Speaker 1: there is a painting on a table, who owns the
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Speaker 1: painting versus who owns the table where the painting is on.
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Speaker 1: There's also the idea, like you said, literary piracy or plagiarism,
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Speaker 1: and people have been caught out reciting the works of
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Speaker 1: other folks. Then there are examples that might be a
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Speaker 1: little more unusual there because there was this huge network
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Speaker 1: of power structures monarchies in ancient times, granting privileges like
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Speaker 1: the royal patent, we make the king's shoes, you know,
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Speaker 1: and then franchises different favors. Budby has a cool distinguishment
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Speaker 1: between these. He says, look, the difference between systems of
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Speaker 1: intellectual property versus franchise is a royal favorite is that
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Speaker 1: the franchises, the royal co signs restrict access to intellectual
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Speaker 1: works ideas that are already in the public sphere, and
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Speaker 1: so they take something away from people. An inventor, on
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Speaker 1: the other hand, is just adding something new to the world.
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Speaker 1: They're not taking away anything that was already there. And
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Speaker 1: that's why you get to like authors would copy each
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Speaker 1: other all the freaking time, you know what I mean.
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Speaker 1: And AI is kind of just an iteration of that.
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Speaker 1: AI is the crack cocaine to the powder cocaine of
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Speaker 1: early plagiarism. Yeah, indeed.
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Speaker 2: And it's interesting because I mean, one person's influence is
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Speaker 2: another person's theft, you know. And we know that artists
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Speaker 2: have borrowed from other artists throughout history, writers have borrowed
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Speaker 2: ideas and sometimes you know, whole concepts or even specific
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Speaker 2: turns of phrase from other writers.
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Speaker 1: And it is a little bit of a gray area.
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Speaker 2: And some of these intellectual property laws are designed to
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Speaker 2: kind of make that a little clearer, make those distinctions
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Speaker 2: a little clear, But it doesn't always work, you know,
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Speaker 2: because it is we do live in a world of
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Speaker 2: intersecting influences, so it's really kind of hard to sometimes say,
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Speaker 2: you know, and we see it a lot too, in
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Speaker 2: like lawsuits surrounding maybe music. You know, I believe it
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Speaker 2: was Ed Sharon just one a couple of lawsuits where
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Speaker 2: he was sued for supposedly, you know, lifting a melody
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Speaker 2: from like a famous R and B song.
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Speaker 1: Once I started that, Yeah, did Fogerty get wasn't Fogerty
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Speaker 1: and Creeden's clear Water? He got sued for music that
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Speaker 1: he had made because it sounded too much like himself,
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Speaker 1: too much like himself.
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Speaker 2: Point being, you know, once this when stuff like this,
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Speaker 2: when creativity starts to get too litigious, it really cracks
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Speaker 2: down on creativity and it makes people scared to like,
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Speaker 2: you know, try things. And so it's it's a line,
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Speaker 2: you know where you don't want people to be open
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Speaker 2: to outright theft and someone could like profit or benefit
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Speaker 2: from literally stealing someone else's idea. But also there's only
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Speaker 2: so many notes in the scale, there's only so many
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Speaker 2: you know, story archetypes, one hundred percent. So it is,
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Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of a delicate dance. But I
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Speaker 2: think this is a very interesting place to start with
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Speaker 2: these examples from antiquity. Another example comes from the birth
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Speaker 2: of the Florentine Republic, where you know, rulers were basically
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Speaker 2: passing out franchises and a lot of like you said, Ben,
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Speaker 2: there are these arbiters of kind of royal favors and privileges,
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Speaker 2: and Ben, this really reminds me a little bit at
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Speaker 2: least of our Snake Oil episode and the idea of
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Speaker 2: these royals essentially having carte blanche to say no, this
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Speaker 2: is fine, and this person's able to do it, and
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Speaker 2: they have, you know, exclusive rights to make this medicine
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Speaker 2: that we have deemed to be efficacious through our god
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Speaker 2: given ability to you know, do science, which.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't the case it all. It turns out that
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Speaker 1: just like we talked about in our previous Vatican City episode,
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Speaker 1: that anytime you are in a society where just one
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Speaker 1: person can decide whether something is good or bad, you
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Speaker 1: run into ridiculous situations like okay, let's go back to
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Speaker 1: this idea of patent, very much related to intellectual property.
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Speaker 1: A patent sort of locks down the concept that this
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Speaker 1: is your idea and whatever happens with it later through
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Speaker 1: the work of others. You should get a piece of
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Speaker 1: that if it's based on your concepts. And this takes
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Speaker 1: us to the Republic of Florence. It's June nineteenth, fourteen,
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Speaker 1: twenty one. There's a guy named Felippo Brunelleschi. He's a
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Speaker 1: famous architect, and he gets this one of the first
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Speaker 1: statutes that protects the rights of a creator, and the
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Speaker 1: Republic of Florence says, Okay, you write something, you invent something.
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Speaker 1: We respect that it's your idea, and we're going to
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Speaker 1: give you incentives for this. And those incentives might very
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Speaker 1: case to case, but what they were also saying, one
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Speaker 1: of the incentives was if you sign up, if you
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Speaker 1: apply and you get a patent, we're going to crack
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Speaker 1: down on people who are trying to take your stuff.
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Speaker 1: And that's very appealing to people at this time, and
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Speaker 1: this becomes a huge piece of patent law as it
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Speaker 1: exists today, the idea that you will be compensated legally
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Speaker 1: if someone infringes upon your idea. And then the other
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Speaker 1: concept was a term limit on these inventors' rights. So
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Speaker 1: that's why you hear about things going out of copyright
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Speaker 1: in the world of literature. And for quite some time,
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Speaker 1: the mouse we all know who I'm talking about. The
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Speaker 1: mouse had some of the best copyright and IP lawyers
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Speaker 1: on the planet, stretching laws every time. Mickey mouse almost
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Speaker 1: got into public domain.
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Speaker 2: Well, and I think they finally run up against the
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Speaker 2: ceiling of all of those efforts they did.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right.
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Speaker 2: And i'd heard that they are considering pivoting from Mickey
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Speaker 2: being their primary you know, mascot to this little dragon
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Speaker 2: called Figment, which is pretty prominent at Disney World now,
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Speaker 2: the Figment, and I think he's been around for a while,
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Speaker 2: but there is like a statue of Walt Disney like
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Speaker 2: whole holding Figment, and he's certainly been in the cannon
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Speaker 2: for a bit. And there is a Figment ride with
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Speaker 2: I think it's John Cleeese or no Eric Idol, I
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Speaker 2: think for money Pythons as one of the narrators or
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Speaker 2: figures in that ride.
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Speaker 1: But it doesn't seem like they fully pivoted to that.
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Speaker 2: But I did read that a ways back, and I'm
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Speaker 2: interested to see how that goes. But yeah, I mean,
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Speaker 2: like through there, you know, just absolute army of lawyers,
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Speaker 2: intellectual property lawyers. I mean, you got to think about it, Disney,
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Speaker 2: you know, I was telling you guys off air that
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Speaker 2: I I mean and the fan watched the nineteen fifty
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Speaker 2: one Alice in Wonderland last night and it holds up. Man,
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Speaker 2: it looks absolutely modern, it's so cool, so innovative, and
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Speaker 2: of course they're going to protect that stuff. And like
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Speaker 2: Disney was just basically one of the first to market
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Speaker 2: with this kind of concept of like scaled, high level
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Speaker 2: glossy animation, and they innovate it with things like the
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Speaker 2: multiplane camera. So of course they're going to be protective
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Speaker 2: of that. But up to a point, you know, there
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Speaker 2: does come a point which it is like it is
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Speaker 2: kind of counterproductive to the public interest, right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and sometimes the public can get lost in
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Speaker 1: these conversations. Let's go to the English system. So over
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Speaker 1: in England they see what is happening in Italy and
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Speaker 1: they like a lot of the Italian ideas. So the
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Speaker 1: English system creates something called the Statute of Monopolies in
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Speaker 1: sixteen twenty four and the confusingly named Statute of ann
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Speaker 1: in seventeen ten. Right, the Statute of Monopolies says, if
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Speaker 1: you invent something, if you write something, you get the
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Speaker 1: monopoly over that for fourteen years, which was a long
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Speaker 1: time because you know, people died very frequently. Yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: This means we're not going to grant any exclusive rights
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Speaker 1: to non original ideas or to works that are already
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Speaker 1: in the public domain. So you can't be the person
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Speaker 1: who goes into court and says, I want a patent
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Speaker 1: on the book of job or tacos. That's my thing.
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Speaker 1: If you introduced them to tacos, you would have blown
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Speaker 1: their minds. That's that's that's a good point, bad example.
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Speaker 2: But the point is you can't just say son that's
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Speaker 2: already been out there, that's been styled on many times
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Speaker 2: by different parties. You can't just say dibbs, you know,
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Speaker 2: like because I just I'm because I said it first.
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Speaker 2: That's not how that works. You have to demonstrate, whether
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Speaker 2: through drawings or you know, uh, some sort of documentation,
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Speaker 2: that you, in fact are the innovator of a certain idea.
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Speaker 2: And I think you made a good point earlier, Ben,
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Speaker 2: that this was an incentive for creators. This probably this
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Speaker 2: type of law is what spurred a lot of innovation.
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Speaker 2: If it were, if there weren't protections, then it would
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Speaker 2: not really benefit creators to come out with this idea
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Speaker 2: because people more powerful than them could just snatch it
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Speaker 2: right out from front of them.
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Speaker 1: Not to say that didn't still happen, certainly did yeah,
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Speaker 1: and this is an excellent point you're making. We also
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Speaker 1: let's look at the Statute of ann because a lot
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Speaker 1: of scholars in the field consider this to be the
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Speaker 1: first modern copyright statute, and it's you can see where
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Speaker 1: they're coming from with it. It goes in part like this,
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Speaker 1: whereas printers, booksellers, and other persons have been lately frequently
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Speaker 1: taken the liberty of printing, reprinting, and publishing books without
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Speaker 1: the consent of or the authors and proprietors, to their
18:45
Speaker 1: very great detriment and too often to the ruin of
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Speaker 1: them and their families. For preventing, therefore such practices for
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Speaker 1: the future, and for the encouragement of learned men to
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Speaker 1: compose and write, to use books, be it enacted. What
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Speaker 1: they're basically saying is everything we just said. That's the
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Speaker 1: best way to put it, like you, Like you mentioned,
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Speaker 1: there's this incentive, and I also want to shout out
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Speaker 1: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which pulls a lot of
19:14
Speaker 1: this work together. And it doesn't take too long for
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Speaker 1: them to go to court. Right, there's that English. This
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Speaker 1: case comes up in English court Miller versus Taylor, and
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Speaker 1: eventually for a while, they say, Look, as a result
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Speaker 1: of this case in seventeen sixty nine, if you are
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Speaker 1: an author, you get to control what you get to
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Speaker 1: control the results of your work, right, you get to
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Speaker 1: control how what you made is used. And then that
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Speaker 1: goes into a more philosophical argument to whom does a
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Speaker 1: work of art belong? Does it belong to the creator,
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Speaker 1: does it belong to the audience? Does it belong to
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Speaker 1: the guy who buys it? I went to the Samurai
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Speaker 1: exhibit in the highchool. Dude, it is cool, but they
19:59
Speaker 1: have so much stuff and there's a thing that freaked
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Speaker 1: me out a little learning about the proprietors. It's a
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Speaker 1: third generation art collector. So it's like this guy is
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Speaker 1: this son and grandson of full time art collectors and
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Speaker 1: this is such a small piece. Their full museum is
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Speaker 1: in Dallas. I suspect oil money, but like, does does
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Speaker 1: that stuff belong to them? And then or does it
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Speaker 1: belong to you know, they bought it. It's interesting.
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Speaker 2: Belong is also sort of a bit of a you know,
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Speaker 2: black box or a gray area kind of term, like
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Speaker 2: it belongs to the reader in terms of the way
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Speaker 2: they interpret it with their imagination. But it doesn't belong
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Speaker 2: to them, and that they can just like republish it
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Speaker 2: under their own name and then expect to collect residuals.
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Speaker 1: You know.
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Speaker 2: So, I mean it is a philosophical conversation, but it's
20:49
Speaker 2: also like it again goes into how do you use
20:53
Speaker 2: your influences as a creator, Like are you truly you know,
20:57
Speaker 2: creating something new based on or influenced by something old
21:02
Speaker 2: or is it so derivative that it is you know,
21:05
Speaker 2: essentially plagiarizing. And and also there's like a whole you know,
21:09
Speaker 2: industry based on creating derivative work and not in the
21:13
Speaker 2: legal sense. Derivative works is an ip ternament of itself,
21:17
Speaker 2: for like making a book, you know, out of a
21:19
Speaker 2: TV show or vice versas, you know, adaptations like the
21:22
Speaker 2: catch All.
21:22
Speaker 1: There is derivative work.
21:23
Speaker 2: But you know, there's the whole concept of mockbusters, you know,
21:26
Speaker 2: where it's like instead of transformers, it's transmorphers. And they're
21:30
Speaker 2: basically banking on the fact that some people might not
21:33
Speaker 2: know the difference and rent the bad one, you know,
21:36
Speaker 2: or the cheap one. It's I believe it's called the Asylum.
21:39
Speaker 2: This is a company that makes these kind of you know,
21:41
Speaker 2: instead of snakes on.
21:42
Speaker 1: A plane straight some train. But they probably are.
21:47
Speaker 2: They've got legal representation who are telling them just how
21:51
Speaker 2: far they can push.
21:52
Speaker 1: That line, like the Revengers instead of the Avengers. These
21:56
Speaker 1: people ran the back aisles a blockbuster for many years.
21:59
Speaker 1: Correct what we know about intellectual property or the way
22:03
Speaker 1: it works out today, even though it does sound kind
22:07
Speaker 1: of ridiculous and you can't get in ridiculous situations with it.
22:11
Speaker 1: A lot of it comes from the United States, which
22:14
Speaker 1: makes sense because one of the biggest US exports is
22:17
Speaker 1: of course culture right movies, film, TV ideas, and the
22:23
Speaker 1: IP system in the US comes from that Statute of
22:27
Speaker 1: Monopolies I mentioned earlier sixteen twenty three, and it still
22:31
Speaker 1: says the same thing. You get exclusive right to your
22:34
Speaker 1: work for a limited time. This comes into something called
22:39
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Body of Liberties thanks to a guy named
22:43
Speaker 1: Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich in sixteen forty one, and he said, look,
22:49
Speaker 1: we're not going to allow anybody to have monopolies, but
22:53
Speaker 1: if you make a new invention and it's overall something
22:56
Speaker 1: that we all think is a good idea, then you
22:59
Speaker 1: can have some exclusivity for a short time. The first
23:02
Speaker 1: guy does this is a guy named Joseph Jenks Sr.
23:06
Speaker 1: Which sounds weirdly Appalachian to me. He has given a
23:09
Speaker 1: fourteen year patent for the invention of not the first
23:14
Speaker 1: water mill engine, but a faster one. And they're like, hey,
23:18
Speaker 1: good job, Joey. You know fourteen years, bro, you just
23:21
Speaker 1: run with this. Let those ponies run. And then the
23:25
Speaker 1: first American copyright goes to a Massachusetts printer named John
23:29
Speaker 1: Usher just a few decades later, sixteen seventy two. Interesting
23:33
Speaker 1: from Massachusetts.
23:35
Speaker 2: I spent a little bit of time over the weekend
23:37
Speaker 2: watching a Criterion Channel collection of Roger Corman films adaptations
23:43
Speaker 2: of Edgar Allen post stories, which is also interesting in
23:46
Speaker 2: terms of intellectual property because those stories, you know, by
23:50
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, I believe, were in the public domain,
23:53
Speaker 2: so I don't think you had to pay any licensing
23:56
Speaker 2: fees to do adaptations of them. And Roger Corman was,
24:00
Speaker 2: I mean, not notorious is the wrong word, but just
24:02
Speaker 2: was very much known for being a very frugal filmmaker.
24:04
Speaker 2: And if you watch some of these, I think they're fabulous.
24:06
Speaker 2: They all star Vincent Price, some of them reuse shots
24:10
Speaker 2: from previous ones and The first two are The Fall
24:13
Speaker 2: of the House of Usher, which is with this guy's name,
24:16
Speaker 2: John Usher, the printer that you're talking about.
24:18
Speaker 1: A lot of these stories are based in.
24:19
Speaker 2: And around the Boston area in Massachusetts, so Usher is
24:24
Speaker 2: this family that's supposedly cursed, you know. But my point
24:28
Speaker 2: is the first two movies, The Pit and the Pendulum
24:30
Speaker 2: and The House Fall of the House of Usher, are
24:32
Speaker 2: both set in like the same kind of decrepit mansion
24:36
Speaker 2: with the same kind of misty exterior shots that are
24:40
Speaker 2: clearly like matte paintings and stuff, and both of them
24:43
Speaker 2: sort of borrow shots for one another. But I actually
24:45
Speaker 2: found them completely delightful. Little sidebar, but I just I couldn't.
24:49
Speaker 2: I couldn't pass up a chance to talk about the
24:51
Speaker 2: name Usher and the fact that there's this whole old
24:54
Speaker 2: English kind of lineage there in Massachusetts around this time.
25:00
Speaker 1: Sense that Massachusetts would be sort of the origin point
25:03
Speaker 1: for a lot of this legal thought because it's an
25:06
Speaker 1: early colony, because there was so much money and so
25:10
Speaker 1: much innovation in the area at the time, and they
25:14
Speaker 1: weren't alone in this race. They weren't the only people
25:17
Speaker 1: who were trying to figure out how to get their
25:19
Speaker 1: heads around protecting ideas. A lot of colonial governments gave
25:23
Speaker 1: patents and copyrights throughout the seventeen hundreds. Typically, though, these
25:28
Speaker 1: were made as special one off acts of legislation and
25:32
Speaker 1: they got passed on request, kind of like you get
25:36
Speaker 1: guacamole on request. I call it the guacamole rule. So
25:39
Speaker 1: if you invented something, you would have to go to
25:41
Speaker 1: your local government and say, hey, lock this down, make
25:46
Speaker 1: this exclusive Rhode Island. What are we anyway? These grants
25:51
Speaker 1: typically all had the same strong commonalities. You can see
25:55
Speaker 1: all you can see all sorts of early examples of this,
25:58
Speaker 1: like Peter Rard in South Carolina sixteen ninety one gets
26:04
Speaker 1: a two year patent for a rice husking machine he invents.
26:09
Speaker 1: Rhode Island gives somebody a ten year patent for the
26:13
Speaker 1: manufacturer of soap, and this continues through all kinds of stuff.
26:19
Speaker 1: The Revolutionary War happens, fast forward, fast forward, and people
26:24
Speaker 1: still want to protect ideas. Massachusetts is one of the
26:28
Speaker 1: first to do this. When the US is newly formed,
26:31
Speaker 1: they make their state constitution, and Massachusetts puts protection of
26:36
Speaker 1: ideas in their constitution, which is pretty cool. Other states
26:41
Speaker 1: didn't do that.
26:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes sense because, like you said, a lot
26:44
Speaker 2: of these early cases were centered right there, and that
26:47
Speaker 2: really was kind of the seat of innovation in the
26:51
Speaker 2: country at the time, so it makes sense they would
26:53
Speaker 2: have kind of led the charge. And Massachusetts and the
26:56
Speaker 2: Boston area obviously still continues to be a very important
26:59
Speaker 2: side of academia, you know, for medical innovation.
27:03
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, absolutely so, even though it was ad hoc
27:14
Speaker 1: in a lot of other states outside of Massachusetts, they
27:17
Speaker 1: still have the same commonality. You get exclusivity, but you
27:21
Speaker 1: don't get it forever. And then as people in the
27:25
Speaker 1: newly formed American States started traveling more and more states,
27:29
Speaker 1: as it became more of an actual country, the need
27:34
Speaker 1: to make the uniform IP legislation became mission critical. So
27:40
Speaker 1: a lot of people, including authors like Noah Webster, started
27:45
Speaker 1: lobbying the federal and state governments to say, hey, copyright legislation,
27:49
Speaker 1: you guys, if something is if I wrote a book
27:53
Speaker 1: in Georgia, then I should still be the guy who
27:56
Speaker 1: wrote the book in New York.
27:57
Speaker 2: Of course, because I mean, obviously we're well past the
28:00
Speaker 2: innovation of widespread you know, typeset printing and all you know,
28:04
Speaker 2: so I mean, things are distributed far and wide, and
28:07
Speaker 2: sometimes you know, thing these these sometimes they're smaller printing
28:11
Speaker 2: operations like so like what we might think of today
28:13
Speaker 2: as you know, more bespoke kind of presses or let's
28:16
Speaker 2: say certain maybe record kind of companies that are smaller
28:22
Speaker 2: that maybe make like high quality bootlegs or something like that.
28:26
Speaker 2: You know, you certainly would have seen that. And if
28:28
Speaker 2: there's no protection, then easily someone could just reprint your
28:31
Speaker 2: work and sell it and make make money from it,
28:35
Speaker 2: you know, and if there's no protection, then you would
28:37
Speaker 2: have no recourse as the creator.
28:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's that's dangerous because you know, this is
28:43
Speaker 1: a full time job for these people, so if they
28:45
Speaker 1: can't make a living off of it, then they can't
28:48
Speaker 1: do it. That's one of the that's one of the
28:51
Speaker 1: things that I think spurs the conversation along here. You
28:55
Speaker 1: want to have a society where people can create culture.
29:00
Speaker 1: And if you don't have that, if it's not possible
29:02
Speaker 1: for them to do that, then eventually a society that
29:07
Speaker 1: can create culture is going to is going to infiltrate
29:11
Speaker 1: and kind of subsume what you think makes your society
29:14
Speaker 1: its own thing.
29:15
Speaker 2: That's right, And I mean, you know, we're so easy
29:17
Speaker 2: to romanticize the advent of the United States and all
29:21
Speaker 2: of that and the Constitution.
29:22
Speaker 1: What it stood for.
29:23
Speaker 2: But I mean, there were a lot of things that
29:25
Speaker 2: were very unique to it that it did stand for.
29:27
Speaker 2: And these types of protections that you know, sort of
29:30
Speaker 2: created the concept of the American Dream were kind of
29:34
Speaker 2: you know, I guess, built into the language of the Constitution,
29:37
Speaker 2: which is what made the United States sort of an interesting,
29:41
Speaker 2: kind of like land of opportunity, right yeah, even if
29:44
Speaker 2: it didn't always prove out to be that way in practice.
29:47
Speaker 1: Pursuit of happiness, correct, right, Yeah, I'm referring to that
29:53
Speaker 1: beautiful line in the Constitution which basically says, you know,
29:57
Speaker 1: go for it, do your best. Yeah it just just
30:00
Speaker 1: give it the old college try so. In seventeen eighty three,
30:04
Speaker 1: Congress passes a pretty important resolution about this that codifies
30:10
Speaker 1: the idea of copyright statutes protecting an author's work for
30:14
Speaker 1: not less than fourteen years. Within two years of this,
30:18
Speaker 1: by seventeen eighty five, twelve of the thirteen states to
30:22
Speaker 1: pass similar legislation. South Carolina is a little bit of
30:25
Speaker 1: an outlier because they equated copyright and patent protections. They said,
30:30
Speaker 1: it's an idea. It's kind of the same thing anyway.
30:33
Speaker 1: You can just just to back.
30:35
Speaker 2: I mean, it wasn't exactly, you know, it's not like
30:38
Speaker 2: one of the part of the Bill of Rights exactly,
30:41
Speaker 2: but it was, you know, the language in the Constitution
30:44
Speaker 2: was suggesting of this sort of protection. Left it up
30:46
Speaker 2: to the states, but it seemed like it was already
30:49
Speaker 2: at this point pretty important to most of them.
30:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. And here's the problem with this stuff, folks.
30:57
Speaker 1: This is where things often get ridiculous. As anyone can
31:02
Speaker 1: assure you. You can write all sorts of laws, you
31:05
Speaker 1: put whatever you want on paper, that is not the
31:08
Speaker 1: same thing as those laws being followed. And putting something
31:12
Speaker 1: on paper doesn't make it automatically true. American intellectual property
31:17
Speaker 1: protection was still a really tall milkshake, a crazy bag
31:21
Speaker 1: of badgers for many years after state laws made it
31:26
Speaker 1: really expensive and tough for people to make use of
31:32
Speaker 1: these of these protections. Right, you would already have to
31:35
Speaker 1: kind of be in the system. You'd have to be
31:37
Speaker 1: kind of well to do. What I'm saying is, if
31:39
Speaker 1: you were a sharecropper and you wrote an amazing book
31:43
Speaker 1: of poems or meditations on agriculture, then you would have
31:49
Speaker 1: a really tough time getting the protection that you were
31:53
Speaker 1: guaranteed on paper. And the Constitutional Convention, to your point,
31:57
Speaker 1: didn't talk about IP stuff until August other things to do,
32:01
Speaker 1: and as soon as it came through, everyone agreed. They
32:04
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, let's do. Yeah, that's fine, that's totally fine.
32:07
Speaker 1: You know. Over there were fifty five people at the
32:10
Speaker 1: Constitutional Convention. Over half had legal training of some sort.
32:15
Speaker 1: Most of them were super deep involved, super deeply involved
32:18
Speaker 1: in their state government. So they all had or at
32:22
Speaker 1: least over half of them had some kind of rough
32:24
Speaker 1: understanding IP law. So this wasn't a hot button issue
32:28
Speaker 1: for them. It was something they could all agree on,
32:31
Speaker 1: which is relatively unusual at any point in American governance.
32:35
Speaker 2: That's right, and it's it's it is a little confusing,
32:38
Speaker 2: and I think that's evidence by my waffling on this.
32:41
Speaker 2: I mean, there was a clause, an IP clause in
32:45
Speaker 2: the Constitution that was written then after a lot of
32:48
Speaker 2: this kind of state by state embracing of IP law.
32:52
Speaker 2: But even though that that it was written into the Constitution,
32:56
Speaker 2: it's still it was it was sort of imperfectly written,
32:59
Speaker 2: I guess, so this whole state based system of intellectual
33:03
Speaker 2: property protection kind of was a little bit you know
33:09
Speaker 2: rough right.
33:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, okay, I say this with great affection
33:14
Speaker 1: for the Constitution. It was a difficult documents, right, they
33:18
Speaker 1: knew it was not going to be perfect. And a
33:20
Speaker 1: lot of times if you read it, there's this vibe
33:24
Speaker 1: of you know, make this happen somehow, so do your best. Yeah,
33:29
Speaker 1: trust sure, product to that happiness, bro. So, like, the
33:33
Speaker 1: US Constitution does have that IP stuff in there. It's
33:36
Speaker 1: Article one, Section eight, clause eight. And all they say
33:41
Speaker 1: is the gist of it is quote to promote the
33:46
Speaker 1: progressive science and useful arts by securing, for limited times
33:51
Speaker 1: to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective
33:55
Speaker 1: writings and discoveries. So just somehow make that happen. That's
33:59
Speaker 1: all the cost. It doesn't say how to do that.
34:01
Speaker 1: It's just like all right also that and you know,
34:04
Speaker 1: these guys already had a long day at the convention.
34:07
Speaker 1: They've probably been arguing back and forth. Someone says, all right,
34:10
Speaker 1: what about this part. We all know this one, and
34:12
Speaker 1: everybody goes, uh, yeah, when's lunch, you know what I mean,
34:17
Speaker 1: Just yeah, just knock it out.
34:19
Speaker 2: So once again hopping across the pond back to Europe.
34:22
Speaker 2: We had countries such as Holland and Switzerland and Belgium
34:27
Speaker 2: and Italy.
34:28
Speaker 1: That were modeling their.
34:32
Speaker 2: IP laws around what England had accomplished. It's interesting considering
34:37
Speaker 2: that I believe England initially modeled their intellectual property laws
34:43
Speaker 2: off of what was that, Ben, We talked about that
34:45
Speaker 2: at the very beginning. Was it about like Florence off
34:47
Speaker 2: of Florence, off of Italy exactly? So it's the circle
34:50
Speaker 2: of life there once again. So you're starting to see,
34:55
Speaker 2: you know, we have weirdly also seen Ben, if I'm
34:58
Speaker 2: not mistaken, it's sort of areas, you know, country by country.
35:02
Speaker 2: But in Europe there are some laws that are more
35:07
Speaker 2: protective of intellectual property for creatives and for you know,
35:12
Speaker 2: rights holders than we have here in the United States.
35:15
Speaker 1: Right sure. And then there are other countries where that
35:19
Speaker 1: that dog doesn't hunt as they say, you know that
35:22
Speaker 1: that leads to some very interesting situations in the In
35:26
Speaker 1: mainland China, for instance, there are tons of Harry Potter
35:32
Speaker 1: books that JK. Rowling didn't write. There are thousands upon
35:38
Speaker 1: thousands of unofficial sequels because it's very much a reading
35:42
Speaker 1: country to all of your favorite books in the West.
35:46
Speaker 1: It's it's still doesn't there's non IP law that is
35:51
Speaker 1: enforced uniformly across the globe, and is that a problem?
35:57
Speaker 1: Is that something that does need to be fixed? What
36:00
Speaker 1: does the future bring?
36:02
Speaker 2: Well, we did start to see, you know, some kind
36:04
Speaker 2: of intellectual property agreements that were more globally sort of focused,
36:10
Speaker 2: like the Burn Convention treaty, and also something called the
36:13
Speaker 2: Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement or TRIPS, which
36:18
Speaker 2: was nineteen which took place in as recently as nineteen
36:21
Speaker 2: ninety four. So there is sort of an eye towards
36:25
Speaker 2: you know, global enforcement of intellectual property taking place. But
36:27
Speaker 2: that all just depends. It's sort of like it's toothless.
36:30
Speaker 2: It's sort of like a lot of UN resolutions, like
36:33
Speaker 2: you're not going to go to war over it. It's
36:36
Speaker 2: sort of more like a play nice. Here's what we've
36:38
Speaker 2: sort of agreed are the rules. But if you're not
36:41
Speaker 2: participating country then, like you said with China or whatever,
36:44
Speaker 2: then it's not really you know, relevant.
36:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of it is sort of Western or
36:48
Speaker 1: European rules, and it's kind of it's weirdly similar to
36:52
Speaker 1: the climate change debate. You know a lot of developing
36:55
Speaker 1: nations say, well, you wrecked the planet. Why do why
36:58
Speaker 1: are you pulling the ladder up after you and telling
37:01
Speaker 1: us that we can't do the same thing to succeed?
37:05
Speaker 2: And so like you polluted more, so shouldn't you have
37:07
Speaker 2: to you know, do more in terms of like carbon
37:11
Speaker 2: credits and rings like that.
37:12
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and you know, folks are gonna have to
37:14
Speaker 1: personally agree with that perspective, but we do need to
37:17
Speaker 1: acknowledge it exists. And with that we are calling it
37:21
Speaker 1: a day. This is the end of part one of
37:23
Speaker 1: our History of Intellectual Property episode. Now, we gave you
37:27
Speaker 1: a lot of background, we gave you a lot of context.
37:29
Speaker 1: Tune in for part two because this is when we
37:32
Speaker 1: get to some even more ridiculous stuff, including some examples
37:37
Speaker 1: of what happens when IP beefs get cartoonish. So thanks
37:42
Speaker 1: as always to our pal, our super producer, mister Backs Williams,
37:46
Speaker 1: Thanks to our research associate, doctor Z.
37:49
Speaker 2: Indeed, huge thanks to Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Alex
37:53
Speaker 2: Williams who composed of our theme, Jonathan Strickland, our very
37:56
Speaker 2: own personal patent trol or just you know a troll.
38:00
Speaker 1: He's sort of more of a bridge troll type figure than.
38:03
Speaker 2: A patent one, which we should talk about the concept
38:05
Speaker 2: of patent trolls a little bit.
38:07
Speaker 1: We certainly mentioned in the.
38:08
Speaker 2: Past, but look for a little bit more of that
38:10
Speaker 2: kind of talk in episode too.
38:13
Speaker 1: I'm taking out a patent on the letter E. We'll
38:17
Speaker 1: see you next type folks.
38:25
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
38:29
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.