There is an enormous amount of romanticism concerning the origins of the US patent system. Tales abound of steamboats on the Schuylkill River during the Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson drafting the patent law with a quill pen, and the passage of the 1790 Patent Act moments after the first Congress was called to session.1 There is a bit of truth in all these legends, and the legends themselves become semi-factual: The energetic push for a patent law forms part of the narrative and culture of America’s distinctive (yet sometimes conflicted) enthusiasm for new technologies. Many who have written about the early US patent system seem to have taken a page from a well-known western film, which includes the line, “when the fact becomes the legend, print the legend.”2