African Americans, Denied Patents, Have Always Innovated

Though the U.S. patent system has consistently excluded them, black Americans have been prolific innovators. The first American patent was granted in 1641, and many colonies granted patents in the years before the Constitution was created. When the Patent and Copyright Clause was written in 1787, the founders used race-neutral language to give inventors exclusive rights to their inventions. But, “like many of the rights set forth in the Constitution, the patent system didn’t apply for black Americans born into slavery,” law professor and licensed patent attorney Shontavia Jonhson writes in Smithsonian Magazine. In 1857, the U.S. commissioner of patents ruled officially that slave inventions could not be granted patents. Henry Boyd and Benjamin Montgomery were both born into slavery, but grew to wealth through innovations to beds and steamboat propeller designs, respectively. Thomas Jennings became the first black patent holder in 1821, when he invented dry cleaning. “True to the legacy of American innovation, today’s black inventors are following in the footsteps of those who came before them,” Johnson writes. “Now patent law doesn’t actively exclude them from protecting their inventions – and fully contributing to American progress.”