The Patent System: America’s Innovation Engine

A consistent, strong correlation, if not a causal relationship, exists between property rights in inventions (patents) and growing innovation economies and flourishing societies. This is not surprising, because it is the same relationship that economists, historians, and social scientists have long identified between reliable and effective property rights and economic growth. If they are secured as property rights in a political and legal system with stable institutions like the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and courts of law that are governed by the rule of law, patents will continue to serve as essential factors in technological and economic progress.