Your question is slightly misguided.

Copyright covers "artistic works", eg the Berne Convention.

Patents cover technological works.

If you don't register and pay for a patent then anyone can work (make, use) your invention if they can find details of it, or reinvent it and work it. Patents apply to a particular country, though you can apply for a region, the patents apply eventually in each country separately.

So to this day if you invent and patent something in USA only, then in France (say) I can make it. But whilst the patent is valid I won't be able to sell it to USA.

Before patents existed, if you could make it, then you could sell it. However, patents started as "litterae patentes", ie "open letters", letters from the monarch to his subjects. They covered manifold topics, including "I grant my subject exclusive right to work this invention", patents are simply the formalised form of such letters.

Copyright since the Berne convention of the late C19th has been an unregistered right applying to all signatory territories. USA signed in the late C20th meaning registration and annotation of © and a year was required in that state until relatively recently.

Some countries, eg Papua New Guinea last time I looked (please check, that may have changed), are not signatories to the Berne Convention, or TRIPs or other copyright treaties. In those countries you can freely reproduce artistic works of others without "hindrance" of copyright. Just as you would be able to before copyright existed.

Copyright's predecessor was legislation to prevent sedition, and gravy exclusive printing rights to those in a printers society in the UK. It was to protect a bookmaker from publishing another's books - a response to the ease of publication ("Licensing of the Press Act 1662").

Queen Anne presided over a statute that created what's widely acknowledge as the first copyright ("Statute of Anne 1710"), it gave exclusive rights to authors, and a key factor was that in 7 (or 14) years works would become free (libre and gratis) to use for the public (they enter the "public domain"). A further important element was preservation, a "deposit" had to be made of copies at a number of libraries -- making the information accessible for educational purposes and ensuring the availability of copies when the 7 year monopoly period expired. The period could be doubled to 14 years on application.