Appreciating the History of the USPTO

All too often, when applying for a US government patent, inventors get frustrated with the process, time and bureaucracy it takes for patent approval. Turn your frustration to appreciation, and think of it this way. Intellectual Property surrounds us in nearly everything we do. With so much invention, it really is amazing that the process works as well as it does. And it took tremendous foresight from our earliest lawmakers to realize that the first step towards progress was to reward and protect inventors. Patent protection was granted by the American colonies as early as 1641, before any formal legal system was in place. And when the Constitution was framed nearly a century later, it contained the first legal provisions for protection.