“Not” Madison

This essay challenges the claim that President James Madison, the namesake of the Trump Administration’s “New Madison” Approach to Antitrust and Intellectual Property Law, was an advocate for strong patent rights unrestrained by the limitations of antitrust law. While Madison supported the authority of Congress to grant patents to inventors, this view was widely shared by his contemporaries. Rather than advocating for strong patent rights, Madison’s writings reveal that he was concerned