Copyright was born out of the Inquisition: the record of having passed censorship was the first document proving an exclusive right to print.

and you may now use the actual Inquisition record of you having gone through censorship as the document to prove that you and only you have the right to print the book and therefore you can sue people for plagiarizing it or printing an unauthorized edition. And so, the very first version of copyright is the Inquisition.