Richmond Times-Dispatch Opinion: Make American intellectual property great again, by Robert J. Koch and Scott Powell
This post originally appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on July 1st, 2017.
The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, is celebrated and commemorated as what gave birth to the United States. But the nation’s ascendance from colonial poverty to global superpower in a little more than 200 years was not just the result of political ideas.
It was also helped by an appreciation of economics by the Founders, who enshrined in the Constitution a national patent system to protect and foster commercialization of invention — and the continuous development of new and better products and ways of doing things.