CHAPTER 24

PUBLIC ATTITUDE TOWARDS HIM WHO STEALS PHYSICAL AND TO THE ONE WHO STEALS MENTAL PROPERTY

Good people will justly gather up their coat-tails in holy horror, when perchance they come in contact with a man convicted of highway robbery, but when has a man been expelled from Church membership, or from fashionable clubs, who has lost a patent suit by a clear case of intentional infringement being proven against him?

At present it would seem that many inventors have a special reason for deploring the decadence of the Eternal Brimstone-Doctrine, as punishment for wrong-doing, especially for the breaking of the Eighth and Tenth Commandments, as its modern substitute of "Thou shalt not steal, less-than-necessary-for-lawyers'-fees-to-absolve-you-and-a-reasonable-margin-of-profit," manifestly is broad enough to include the stealing of inventive production.