MarketPR
As the United States marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, historian Arthur Herman contends the nation's defining economic engine — what he terms "founders' fire" — remains as live as ever, embedded in constitutional protections that have compounded American invention for more than two centuries and now extend into artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
The Constitutional Wager on Intellectual Property Herman traces the legal foundation for American innovation to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which enshrines the right to own intellectual property and to secure government-licensed patents.
George Washington signed the Patent Act in 1790, setting in motion what Abraham Lincoln — himself a patent holder — later described as the "fire of genius." That statutory framework preceded Samuel Morse's telegraph, Thomas Edison's light bulb, Henry Ford's automobile, and Steve Jobs' personal computer, and Herman argues it now underpins today's artificial intelligence companies and the builders of tomorrow's quantum computers.
Immigrant Founders and the Pursuit-of-Happiness Premium Alongside the IP architecture, Herman points to the Declaration's guarantee of the "pursuit of happiness" as a second structural advantage — a right he describes as entirely subjective and individual, deliberately insulated from government or corporate override.
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