Real Clear Markets: The U.S. Patent System Has Worked Out Pretty Well. Don’t Let Cronies Mess It Up by Charles Sauer
While many rights in the Constitution are defined vaguely, the Founders laid out one right explicitly in that important document: the right to a patent. They saw the limitless opportunities of the Industrial Revolution and wanted to protect the inventors who would drive it.
To borrow a phrase from one remarkable inventor, “It’s worked out pretty well so far.”
The Founders could have included rights for anything, but they found the right to own your ideas (for a limited time) instead of the King deciding who owned an idea to be important enough to codify it in the Constitution.
This simple policy has been, and still is, the driving force behind the U.S. economy and U.S. innovation. Unfortunately, some people don’t respect that right and complain when the government does its job by enforcing intellectual property, like when the International Trade Commission stops goods coming into the country built on —stolen—patented technology.