ARE INVENTIONS PROPERTY?
BY M. T. N. BENARD,
Editor of the “Journal des Economistes,” July, 1868.
(Translated and Reprinted by his obliging consent.)
In the number of the Journal des Economistes for last December there appeared a very conscientious paper on “Property in Inventions,” by our learned colleague, M. le Hardy de Beaulieu. We would have preferred that some master of the science had published an answer to this article, which it seems to us is based on a wrong principle, and that he had given to the readers of this journal the opposite view of those ideas so ably set forth by the honourable Professor of Political Economy at the Belgian “Musée de l’Industrie.”
We believe that this question has acquired sufficient importance and reality to merit being fully argued and cleared up; and, no other having taken up the pen in answer, we shall endeavour to set forth the principle which alone appears to us true and admittable.
We throw out these ideas for discussion, hoping that the subject will be taken up by one of our masters in the science, and that this great debate will be carried out in a manner suitable to the imperishable doctrines of justice and equity, which form the basis of political economy.