Thomas Jefferson argues that ideas, unlike physical property, cannot be owned exclusively. Once an idea is shared, it naturally spreads and cannot be taken back or possessed solely by one person. All people who receive an idea simultaneously possess the whole of it, without diminishing the idea for others. Ideas were designed by nature to freely spread among people for mutual improvement, like fire that expands without lessening itself or air that cannot be confined. Therefore, inventions cannot truly be subjects of property.

1. FREE
INFORMATION
wants to be

2. “If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than
all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the
thinking power called an idea, which an individual may
exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but
the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the
possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot
dispossess himself of it.

3. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the
less, because every other possesses the whole of it.

4. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction
himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his
taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

5. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over
the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man,
and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when
she made them, like fire, expansible over all space,
without lessening their density at any point, and like the
air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical
being, incapable of confinement or exclusive
appropriation.

6. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of
property.”

7. - Thomas Jefferson

8. Please note that all content & opinions expressed in this deck are my own and don’t
necessarily represent the position of my current, or any previous, employers