Property rights critical to rule of law & economic/social growth – US legacy proves

Property rights are the foundation for flourishing societies and economic growth.1 This is equally true for patents, which are property rights in new and useful inventions. The economic and historical evidence is overwhelming that reliable and effective property rights in new inventions—patents issued and secured by stable political and legal institutions functioning under the rule of law—are an essential ingredient for growing innovation economies.2 Many people witness this on Shark Tank as the venture capitalists always ask inventors if they have a patent to secure their invention.3

Even before Shark Tank, students learn in school about the innovators responsible for making modern life a veritable miracle, such as Charles Goodyear (vulcanized rubber), Cyrus McCormick (mechanized reaper), Alexander Graham Bell (telephone), Thomas Edison (record players, lightbulbs, electrical systems), Nikola Tesla (electrical systems), Willis Carrier (air conditioning), Steve Wozniak (personal computers), and many others. All of these inventors had the fruits of their productive labors secured to them by reliable and effective patents. Thus, they were willing to create their new inventions and then sell them to consumers in the marketplace, revolutionizing our day-to-day lives in the 21st century.

The United States has long been regarded as the world leader in securing property rights in technological innovations, driving the next wave of innovations with patent protection when the rest of the world hesitated. The U.S. patent system has been successful precisely because it consistently secured reliable and effective property rights in the fruits of inventors’ labors.4 This pattern of U.S. leadership in patented innovation continued up through the most recent technological revolutions of our modern era: the high-tech revolution,5 the biotech revolution,6 and the mobile revolution.7