America needs to Invent!

Thomas Jefferson once wrote to his daughter Martha, in 1787, that because America did not posess Europe’s vast resources, we are obliged to invent and execute, to find means within ourselves, and not to lean on others.

As it was then it still is today America needs to Invent!  What makes America unique is our people and their "universal ambition to go forward" as Hezekiah Niles puts it.  Our founding Fathers were wise to provide for this directly in the Constitution which in itself was an innovation.  Via a patent system that allowed for anyone to use their inventive creativity and entrepreneurial spirit to succeed in life, to provide for something better for themselves and society as a whole, the United States was set on a course of prosperity and growth.

They founded the patent system on the key recognition of the rights of the inventor.  This provided the incentive and along with fees that everyone could afford allowed people of all walks of life to invent.  At the same time the first patent law passed by Congress on April 10, 1790 set patent fees at $3.70.  Three years later it was raised to $30, still far cheaper than other contries such as Great Britain, and remained $30 for the next 70 years, allowing for the growth of industries around peoples ideas.

The founding Father's patent system encourgaged innovation through incentive and support for everyone.  Current patent reform with its change to a First-Inventor-to-File system risks elimination of the very spirit that made America what it is today.  We still need more innovation today.  What really matters, what has always mattered, is that individuals, supported in their efforts to innovate, protected by the bedrock of the United States Constitution itself, have served to build the most innovative country on the planet.

Changes to the Patent System, developed long ago by our countries founders and proven over many years, as proposed in the current Senate (S23) and House (HR1249) risk damaging the very innovation they seek to develop.  It could cause the independent inventors to become a thing of the past as they are required to compete in a race to the patent office against well established coporations who themselves were born out of the innovation of individuals.  Even today large companies are recognizing this age old fact and have taken to calling it "Open Innovation."

For the sake of the United States we need to keep our innovation lead through motivated, incentivized inventors whomever they may be.