Simply put, IP protections provide the 'secret sauce' for human innovation, prosperity and well-being.

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Amid ongoing tension on other geopolitical matters, this week offers cause for worldwide celebration with the annual observance of World Intellectual Property (IP) Day.  

Although its focus remains global, the yearly celebration paradoxically highlights IP’s value within the United States specifically.  

The reason for that is simple:  No nation traditionally protects and cherishes IP rights as reliably as we do.  In turn, that helps explain why the United States became and remains the most innovative, prosperous nation in human history.  

Moreover, at a moment in which the global debate over import and export balances remains a matter of good faith disagreement, World IP Day also highlights a realm in which America’s preeminence remains uncontested, for which the world owes America a debt of gratitude.  

Simply put, IP protections provide the “secret sauce” for human innovation, prosperity and well-being.  

Our Founding Fathers considered that self-evident, and important enough to specifically enshrine in Article I of the Constitution itself.  There, the text expressly empowers Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”  Going back even further in philosophical tradition, that also reflects the Founders’ deep understanding of thinkers like John Locke that protection for patents, copyrights and trademarks offered both a moral imperative and a utilitarian tool to achieve a greater public good.  

Through ensuing generations, that American tradition of protecting IP has fueled ingenuity.  Indeed, former patent attorney Abraham Lincoln once observed that our legacy of IP protections “added fuel of interest to the fire of genius.”  Supreme Court precedent echoes that tradition, recognizing that protection for IP not only constitutes a legal and moral good, but benefits society as a whole by rewarding individual effort.  

The concept is simple.  When people remain free to own and profit from what they create through intellect and hard work, they create more.  Accordingly, IP protection isn’t some luxury, it’s a necessity for greater invention and creativity.  Protecting patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets provides inventors, artists, scientists and entrepreneurs the assurance that their efforts won’t simply be devalued or stolen by others to unfairly profit from those efforts.  

Without that assurance of IP protection, however, innovative spirit withers.  

Consequently, America has remained exceptional because of our legacy of recognizing that private property, including the fruits of one’s intellect and creativity, remains a natural right, not merely a utilitarian legal construct.  

Those utilitarian real-world results, however, stand undeniable.  No nation in human history protects IP in the way that America does, and no nation in human history even remotely rivals America in terms of technological advancement, cultural influence or economic might and dynamism.  From the airplane to the internet, from film to music, from the Coca-Cola logo to the Apple logo, America’s IP-based history and economy drive the world.  

Today, IP-intensive industries account for nearly 40% of the U.S. economy and support approximately 50 million jobs.  That’s about one-third of our workforce, and larger than the total economy of almost every other nation on Earth.  IP-intensive jobs also pay significantly higher wages – nearly $18,500 higher than non-IP employment.  IP also represents a source of U.S. export strength, with IP-related exports exceeding $140 billion in 2024 alone.  

That’s why World IP Day remains so important and worth celebrating.  Amid an era in which we increasingly trade in knowledge, creativity and innovation – rather than simply hard goods and services – some still conceptualize “property” in terms of tangible assets like land, homes, automobiles or other physical objects.  That’s a defectively narrow view.  In today’s world, the breakthroughs that tend to drive economic growth, improve lives and secure America’s preeminence across the globe are increasingly rooted in ideas – ideas subject to patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret protection.  

Fortunately, the Trump administration rightly considers strengthening IP protections a public policy priority.  Through reform of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, stronger IP protection in international trade agreements like the USMCA or enhancing enforcement tools, the administration rejects the dangerous tendency by the Obama and Biden administrations to weaken or disregard U.S. IP protections.  

Going forward, it’s important that the Trump administration, Congress and the courts continue that improvement.  As global competition intensifies – especially with nations like China that routinely undermine or outright steal others’ IP – the U.S. must continue to lead and the rest of the world must coalesce in recognizing the value of IP protection.  That means stronger enforcement, more rational legal procedures and an unwavering focus on the value of IP and the natural rights of creators and innovators.  

So on this week’s annual World IP Day, we don’t merely celebrate an abstract principle.  We celebrate a philosophy and system that fuels prosperity, rewards effort and incentivizes more invention.  Protecting IP isn’t merely positive utilitarian policy.  It’s the American way, and something in which the rest of the world should join.