{"id":26538,"date":"2025-09-13T12:49:58","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T16:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=26538"},"modified":"2025-09-15T11:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:44:10","slug":"quote-of-the-day-patents-as-critical-to-americas-special-century-of-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/26538\/quote-of-the-day-patents-as-critical-to-americas-special-century-of-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Patents Critical to America&#8217;s &#8220;Special Century&#8221; of Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), James Pethokoukis wrote a fascinating\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/economics\/americas-forgotten-prelude-to-its-special-century\/?mkt_tok=NDc1LVBCUS05NzEAAAGc1zEeKZHnSXn0SaR7JpZbgn8hNBxyh8C1UvgHj5_YzXu6K5ZblHVnowhQVkJEgxZVExoOK4oKn5Mr6oLaJ_yeoKdsUmcCF4XW4UVxUvANDr7Jtf8\">piece,<\/a> &#8220;America&#8217;s Forgotten Prelude to Its Special Century,&#8221; in which he explains what led to the century during which America <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-10.png?x85095\">became<\/a> the most prosperous, powerful and innovative nation in human history between 1870 and 1970.\u00a0 &#8220;Yet America&#8217;s special century,&#8221; Pethokoukis notes, &#8220;did not emerge <em>ex nihilo<\/em>.\u00a0 The pro-growth groundwork was laid in the less glamorous decades between 1790 and 1870.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Critically, Pethokoukis notes the importance of intellectual property (IP), and patents in particular:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Equally important was an innovation culture, according to Rosenbloom.\u00a0 Patents grew almost five times as fast as the population between the years 1790 and 1850.\u00a0 Ordinary mechanics drove a culture of tinkering and incremental improvement (what economic historian Joel Mokyr has called the &#8220;Industrial Enlightenment.&#8221;).&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As we often highlight, strong patent and <a href=\"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/54-state-of-affairs\/7276-intellectual-property-americas-edge-versus-china\">IP rights<\/a> (including copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets) play just as important a role today in America&#8217;s innovation and economy on everything from <a href=\"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/56-health-care\/7351-senate-leaders-go-on-offense-for-us-pharmaceutical-innovation\">lifesaving pharmaceuticals<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/263264\/top-companies-in-the-world-by-market-capitalization\/\">technology<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/25547\/trump-administration-stands-up-for-u-s-copyright-protections-under-potential-south-african-threat\/\">entertainment<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), James Pethokoukis wrote a fascinating\u00a0piece, &#8220;America&#8217;s Forgotten Prelude to Its Special Century,&#8221; in which he explains what led to the century during which America became the most prosperous, powerful and innovative nation in human history between 1870 and 1970.\u00a0 &#8220;Yet America&#8217;s special century,&#8221; Pethokoukis notes, &#8220;did not emerge ex [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,1684,2871,2872,5057],"class_list":["post-26538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-economy","tag-innovation","tag-intellectual-property","tag-ip","tag-patents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26538"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26542,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26538\/revisions\/26542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}