To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings
and Discoveries;
Note how it doesn't say anything about "intellectual property" or "theft" or "moral rights", or even third parties. I'm not in favor of abolition of copyright, patents and trademarks, but this is exactly the kind of muddled, framing[1] language that the blog post linked to is trying to correct.
The laws have been pushed so far in the direction of "protecting" intellectual "property", and language has become so twisted by those who have the most to gain from the results that you can argue it's how things stand today, but it obviously wasn't the original intent, and it doesn't necessarily make it right. It's also not necessarily good economic policy (you want to see startups killed off in this country? Just continue to let copyright, patent and trademark law continue to expand).
The word "steal" was in the original quote that Notch attributed to whoever that other guy was. This question of whether that word "steal" is used correctly is total non sequitur. The primary purpose of patents is to disallow use of an idea without permission (that's what "stealing" was intended to mean in the quote, whether you like that word or not) in order to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
From the US constitution, section 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Note how it doesn't say anything about "intellectual property" or "theft" or "moral rights", or even third parties. I'm not in favor of abolition of copyright, patents and trademarks, but this is exactly the kind of muddled, framing[1] language that the blog post linked to is trying to correct.
The laws have been pushed so far in the direction of "protecting" intellectual "property", and language has become so twisted by those who have the most to gain from the results that you can argue it's how things stand today, but it obviously wasn't the original intent, and it doesn't necessarily make it right. It's also not necessarily good economic policy (you want to see startups killed off in this country? Just continue to let copyright, patent and trademark law continue to expand).
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_%28social_sciences%29