Archer W.: What is a patent and why are they so important?
Petula Dvorak: A patent is something that protects anything people invent. If you create something really smart, you won’t make any money from it if everyone just copies it. So we have a system to protect inventors. But the system wasn’t that good in 1793 when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin—that’s short for engine. It was a brilliant and really important invention that changed the way cotton was picked. It did the work of 50 people in just one day. But after Eli Whitney invented it, copycats showed up all over. He got a patent, it was number 72. But it did little to stop people from stealing his idea.
He tried to sue everyone who copied him so he could make some money from his invention. But he lost so much in court, he ended up in debt and poor. More importantly though, it was so cheap to copy his gin, farmers everywhere did it, expanding cotton crops and expanding their enslaved labor force to grow them. It changed the American economy, and some believe it prolonged and even expanded slavery.
Archer W.: Thank you, Petula. That was Petula Dvorak from The Washington Post.
