Economics of Ideas: Paul Romer and Thomas Jefferson

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Here's Paul Romer on the power of ideas, from his article the Fall 2012 Issues in Science and Technology:
"What makes ideas so remarkable is their capacity for shared use. A bottle of valuable medicine can heal one person, but the formula that is used to make the medicine is as valuable as the total number of people on Earth. Economists call this concept “non-rivalry.”... There is a saying that you all know that we use to capture this character of non-rivalry: If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day, but if you teach someone to fish, you destroy another aquatic ecosystem."
For me, the classic statement about the economic power of ideas and their relation to the patent system comes from Thomas Jefferson, in a letter  he wrote in 1813: 
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than allothers of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called anidea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it tohimself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession ofevery one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiarcharacter, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every otherpossesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instructionhimself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receiveslight without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to anotherover the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement ofhis condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed bynature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, withoutlessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe,move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusiveappropriation. 
"Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as anencouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may ormay not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, withoutclaim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I aminformed, that Englandwas, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a generallaw, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some othercountries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personalact, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopoliesproduce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observedthat the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful asEngland in new and useful devices."