The Future Belongs to the Builders, Not the Gatekeepers
On my workbench sits a rust-red vise, older than I am. It was forged in Ohio sometime around the year we landed on the moon. If you unscrew the jaw fully, you’ll find the manufacturer’s patent number stamped into the steel like a birthmark. That patent expired decades ago, yet somehow that vise is as American as the morning shift whistle — reliable, repairable, and built for hands that make.
I keep it there because it reminds me of a truth we forget in our era of digital ownership and subscription everything: ideas aren’t valuable because someone locks them away. They are valuable because someone puts them to work.
But today, more and more of the tools we need — not just physical tools, but software, designs, treatments, and technologies — are being placed under legal lock and key for durations that would make a medieval monarch blush. And somehow we still have the audacity to call that “innovation.”
Grammina used to say: “Argue less, do better.” We are passing around less than ever.
The Original Deal: Incentivize Innovation, Then Release It
The Founders believed in limited monopolies for one reason only: to promote progress. A nudge toward invention, not a lifetime deed to human imagination.
Jefferson himself — who knew a thing or two about patents — warned that ideas are like flames:
“He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
Knowledge is not diminished by sharing. It expands.
But look where we’ve landed:
- Copyrights extended to nearly a century after creation.
- Patents held unused, purely to block others from building.
- Billion-dollar corporations owning knowledge funded by public research — and suing the public for trying to use it.
Somewhere between the Patent Act of 1790 and Silicon Valley’s latest lawsuit, we turned a temporary ladder into a permanent wall.
IP as a Barrier to the Working Class
If you’re a kid with a garage and a dream, or a retiree with a clever fix to a farm tool — what stands between you and your own tomorrow?
Not skill.
Not guts.
Not work ethic.
A lawyer.
Today’s intellectual property regime is not a defense of ingenuity — it is a defense of incumbency. It freezes mobility. It cements hierarchy. It tells every would-be Edison:
“If you’re not already rich, you’d better get permission.”
That isn’t the free market.
That’s feudalism with better branding.
Tech Giants Aren’t Competing — They’re Fortifying
There is a certain irony in the fact that AI companies have been trained on the entire archive of human creation, yet we are now told they cannot share that creative power back with the people whose knowledge built them.
And big platforms — let’s name the species, if not the beast — use IP not to build but to prevent others from building:
- Buy a startup just to bury the product.
- Patent ideas for the sole purpose of never using them.
- Lobby to extend copyright indefinitely so Mickey Mouse never escapes the castle.
That’s not capitalism.
That’s a caste system.
A Return to Republican Virtue
Small-r republicanism — the kind our civic DNA was printed from — opposes hereditary power in all its costumes. Even digital ones. Our Founders did not fight a crown just to hand the scepter to “corporate persons.” A society that rewards innovation should never allow that reward to calcify into dynasty.
Grammina used to say: “Argue less, do better.”
And there’s a whole lot of arguing around patents — but precious little doing.
So here’s a simple redesign of the deal:
The Two-Gate Rule:
If you’ve made enough, the knowledge returns to the commons.
A patent is a temporary privilege, not a permanent title. So let’s tie its lifespan to the reason it exists: innovation and broad prosperity.
A patent becomes open-source when either:
1️⃣ The owner enters the top 30% of wealth/income, or
2️⃣ The patent’s profits land in the top 30% of revenue-generating inventions
Whichever comes first.
Call it what it is: Success Triggered Expiration.
You invented something transformative?
Good. Get rich — truly.
But once that invention has:
- Made its owner wealthier than most Americans, or
- Provided enough financial return to be considered a market success…
Then the ladder drops back down, and others may climb it too.
Not confiscation.
Not socialism.
Just the completion of the bargain innovation asked society to make.
Rewards first — then freedom.
That is republican virtue.
Who Wins? Everyone Who Builds.
- Entrepreneurs gain access to the toolsets and knowledge currently trapped behind paywalls and paperwork.
- Consumers gain competition where now there is consolidation.
- The middle class gains mobility, because opportunity reverts to being earned — not gobbled up by those who already have it.
- Young inventors gain the right to reuse, improve, and repair without begging permission.
The only losers?
Those whose profits depend on doing nothing.
I do not weep for the man collecting rent on bolts he stopped tightening years ago.
The Public Paid for Most of This Anyway
Walk into any graduate lab in this country. Look at the tools, the grants, the data infrastructure. Taxpayers paid for that scaffolding. Yet when a breakthrough happens, the product is privatized and the public is left paying again for access.
They privatize the profits.
They socialize the imagination.
Citizens shouldn’t have to license back what they already funded.
A More Dynamic, More American Economy
Imagine the surge of invention when the best ideas can never be hidden under a stack of legal filings. Imagine 10,000 small shops and 100,000 kitchen-table innovators unleashed.
The next prosthetic limb — built in a garage.
The next power system — printed on someone’s porch.
The next wave of dignity — manufactured by hands long locked out.
Our country did not rise on royalties.
It rose on usefulness.
The Vise and the Frontier
That old vise on my bench works because no one can tell it not to. No corporation collects a nickel every time I tighten its jaws. It is part of a tradition older than patents themselves:
Make. Share. Improve. Repeat.
Liberty is not a product.
Progress is not a possession.
We owe that old vise — and the millions like it — a future in which ownership does not outlive purpose.
As Grammina would say:
“The only wealth worth guarding is the kind you can hand to your neighbor.”
Let’s hand America back its imagination.
Let’s retire the monarchy of ideas.
Let the builders build.
Closing Grace
A free society must choose: either we protect monopolies, or we protect opportunity — but we cannot pretend to do both.
