Us Patent Office Essay

America is the world’s largest national economy and Americans generate greater than 20% of the world’s total income. All this started with one fundamental innovation in the nineteenth century. It was an innovation that created a monumental wave which spurred economic growth in America and set us on an unprecedented trajectory of economic growth. This significant innovation of the nineteenth century was the creation of the American Patent Office in 1836.

Economic growth is directly related to creation of industries, jobs, and markets where products are bought and sold. The way new goods, jobs, and industries are created is by new inventions. The creation of the Patent Office created an engine for the rapid introduction of new inventions in

In contrast, Europe had wealth, people, and power. Europe’s established patent system was such that only the rich could afford to file patents which were granted by the Monarch and the few patent holders then became successful merchants. The challenge for our Founding Fathers was to create a method for the common man to think innovatively and realize what is now commonly known as the American Dream. Our clever Founding Fathers created the framework for the U.S Patent System in the very fabric of our Constitution. The US Patent Office was started in 1836 and created a process around the fundamental patent system. Three main reasons by which the US Patent Office enabled America’s economic prosperity in the nineteenth century and beyond were: it democratized patents, made patents tradeable assets, and created new industries.

The US Patent Office kept fees low at $3.60 per patent. Also, the patents were reviewed and granted by a scientific or technical committee. Therefore, wealth or influence was not important to invent. This allowed anyone with a good idea to file a patent hence democratizing

Consequently, the original inventor did not need the money to commercialize their idea themselves. In fact they could earn money by selling their patent. This had not been possible in other patent systems of the time. To make the trade of these even easier, there was a special provision in the patent law which allowed the patent to be kept on a registry which was available to the public eye. All of a sudden, companies would be able to read these public registries for interesting ideas. If a company was interested in an idea, they had an option to buy it from the inventor. This gave an inventor a lot of material incentive, or profit incentive, meaning that people now had an incentive to innovate, create, and discover.

The material incentive was highly effective and caused vast out of proportion economic growth in America. More than 95% of great inventors who have been mentioned by my colleagues took positive action when this incentive was created. A whole new patent industry was born and changed the face of American economy. This point is illustrated by data from the Dictionary of National Biography. If you locate the great inventors’ patents in this Dictionary, you learn that 60–70% of those inventors had only primary and secondary education and came from humble