Patent Act

So as we begin to wrap up, I wanted to take a long view on this topic and start by going back to the late 1700s when our country's legislative framework was being architected.

There were some really great aspects to it, like the Commerce Act that promoted economic growth or the Copyright and Patent Act that promoted innovation.

But these things serve the country very well for a very long time.

Now we're here at this moment where we have to architect the next legislative framework around AI, something that does promise a lot of upside potential.

Yeah, you know, I think a great place to start an appropriate topic, given this year's celebration of the 250th anniversary of our country, is really going back to what the founders were thinking about intellectual property policy and why they decided to put it in the Constitution.

And it's easy to get caught up in the weeds of IP policy and IP lawyers and policymakers and kind of lose the greater plot, which is why were IP rights incorporated into the Constitution? Why did George Washington talk about the importance of intellectual property protection in his first State of the Union? Why was it, you know, very soon after codified in the first Patent Act in April of 1790.

And that's because the founders in creating our country and looking at the model of what was working and not working in England saw that economic protection for scientific discoveries and innovations were critical to grow and support you know, and nurture the economic, you know, success of a new country.

And, you know, maybe reasonable people can disagree on the importance of IP policy.

...

Patent Act.

Copyrights are, uh, federal-

creatures

Do you believe in, like say Mark Zuckerberg is a great founder versus Mark Zuckerberg is a product of having born in the US at a time when the internet was blowing up?

Sure, but there were 10 other companies at that point, like Lupin, right? There were 26,500 pharma companies started after the Patents Act of 1970, but there are only 10 of them worth more than $10 million, right? So clearly, just being in the right place at the right time is not good enough, right? I mean, if that was enough, then everybody would be successful.

So Back to Karl Marx.

We make our own luck, but not in the circumstances of our choosing, but we do make our own luck.

trade secret law? So patents come directly from the Constitution.

And then there's the Patent Act 35 USC that sets forth the laws relating to how patents work.

And then you have an... entire administrative superstructure laid over it where you have the patent office Trade secrets originally came from the common law.

You now have the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, which is implemented in every state across the United States except for two.