It literally predates the United States Constitution by hundreds of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hist

It literally predates the United States Constitution by hundreds of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright Also, I'd be careful at taking the reasoning of political documents at face value. Many items in the Constitution are post-hoc, Lockeian/liberal justifications for a social order that was in fact largely copied over wholesale from English parliamentary monarchy, with surprisingly few tweaks.