OPINION:
As the nation prepares to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, many Americans may not realize that some of our most sacred constitutional freedoms hang in the balance.
The push to secularize the nation’s inherently Christian founding principles — including through attacks on protections for the divinely endowed right to own the fruits of one’s labor — threatens to hinder the progress, creativity and competition inherent to our exceptional republic.
Today, anti-patent forces seek to dismantle the Constitution’s essential but overlooked intellectual property clause. This constitutional right not only guarantees protections for inventors but also incentivizes American ingenuity. Fortunately, there’s still time to counter these foolhardy attempts.
From the beginning, the intellectual property clause was revolutionary and inherently American. It marked the first time a nation’s founding document granted individual intellectual property rights and ensured that every citizen had a chance at the American dream. All Americans, regardless of their background or class, could realistically aspire toward creation: pursuing inventions, innovation and careers previously reserved for the wealthy.
The intellectual property clause and associated patents protected creators’ rights to their discoveries, leading to an explosion of growth that made America a global powerhouse while enabling Americans to change the course of their lives through the ownership and exploration of innovative ideas.
With Eli Whitney’s patent on the cotton gin in 1794, John Deere’s patent on the first commercially successful steel plow in 1865, Samuel Morse’s patent on the telegraph in 1840 and Thomas Edison’s patent on the incandescent light bulb in 1880, patents ensured from the earliest days of our republic that America was a center for invention and human progress. Their discoveries led to a higher quality of life for all humanity, supporting the endurance of the American experiment and our nation’s security and prosperity.
Powerful anti-patent forces put this vital foundation at risk. Determined to weaken the U.S. intellectual property system, they push new taxation and regulatory interventions that favor powerful corporations and foreign actors while undermining the public benefits of protecting ordinary Americans’ intellectual property.
In the medical innovation field, actors on the left and right pursue price controls and other regulatory hurdles that hinder U.S. biopharmaceutical firms’ ability to lead the world in drug development. That threatens our global prowess, economy and citizens’ health.
The Democratic-sponsored Inflation Reduction Act allowed the government to impose drug price controls. This has led to the abandonment of more than 50 follow-on drug research projects and halted the development of 26 prospective cancer drugs. The number of lives lost and families suffering because of this misstep, now and in the future, is beyond counting.
The attack on our innovation base from bureaucratic and “red-tape” policies causes indefinite delay for many American inventions and stifles creativity. Activists have steamrolled ahead on this agenda. Some seek to reverse the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which explicitly limits the government’s ability to micromanage intellectual property rights. Bayh-Dole is essential for promoting Americans’ ownership and control of their creations and ensuring that bureaucratic lethargy doesn’t inhibit practical use.
Making matters worse, a ludicrous Clinton-era policy allows patents to be published before American inventors have secured their intellectual property rights. This policy enables foreign competitors, such as China, to steal American technology and inventions while they languish in patent limbo. This hands over our new inventions to other countries for their profit, even to use them against us.
Foreign actors also undermine American invention. U.S. 5G and 6G wireless technology companies, world leaders in standard-essential patents, licensing and royalties, face relentless attack from anti-patent forces in the European Union and Britain — the same nation from which we won independence 250 years ago. These countries want to prevent American innovators from having a say in negotiations over the value of their own inventions.
Foreign-aligned companies here also leverage lawfare to steal American inventions from smaller firms that lack the financial or legal resources to defend themselves.
ParkerVision has spent more than a decade fighting to protect its intellectual property from a Chinese tech giant. ParkerVision’s founder, Jeffrey Parker, has warned that these attacks will destroy American invention by preventing small inventors from protecting their own inventions. The loss of those inventions and the jobs they create, Mr. Parker warns, will destroy America’s ability to compete globally.
America’s 250th birthday provides an opportunity to honor our national heritage, especially intellectual property rights, and to fight to preserve those constitutional guarantees. If America doesn’t defend our innovation foundation, we will all suffer the consequences. Leaders in Congress and the administration must stand up for Americans’ divinely inspired right to exclusively own and benefit from their creations.
• James Edwards, Ph.D., is founder and executive director of Conservatives for Property Rights(@4PropertyRights), patent policy adviser to Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, and author of “To Invent Is Divine: Creativity and Ownership” (Fidelis, 2025).
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