The Articles of Confederation were bad news for inventors and authors

Here's a question I never expected to have to answer: How do you cite to the Articles of Confederation in Bluebook law-review style?

Because, you see, I learned today that Congress under the Articles of Confederation did not have the authority to pass any kind of federal intellectual property protection (i.e., a patent or a copyright). Here's why. The States retained all powers that the Articles did not delegate to Congress. The Articles did not delegate the power to pass protective laws to promote "science and useful arts" -- an issue that was resolved later, without controversy, during the Constitutional Convention by the happy drafting of Art. 1, sec. 8, cl. 8. So under the Articles, every State had its own copyright and patent laws, except where a particular State hadn't enacted any. Authors and inventors were left to rely on the Articles' full faith and credit clause. I wonder if it squelched innovation and commerce at all, or if it really just didn't matter too much because only a small, small percentage of the population were in industry, as opposed to farming.

But imagine 50 States having 50 (or fewer) separate patent and copyright statutes. It would be like blue laws. And for the love of christ, imagine 50 different rules on reversions of assigned copyrights, and then interrelating the rules across States. I mean, I think it's a pain trying to figure out if I can buy a case of wine over the internet, or whether that's an unmarked car in the parking lot at Kreston Liquor Mart radioing my license plate to a cop at the Delaware-Pennsylvania line on I-95.

Or maybe it would go like a lot of entertainment law, and there would be basically only 2 sets of rules, California-style and New York-style.

In conclusion, in my expert opinion the Articles of Confederation were a mess, and I approve of dropping them in favor of a document that gives the national government more power. Also, I need to figure out where I stowed my Bluebook after my failed attempt to write on to the law review a couple of summers ago.