National IP Month: Protecting American Innovation and America’s Competitive Edge

This October, the Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity (TAPP) is proud to celebrate National Intellectual Property Month and the American innovators whose ideas, inventions, and discoveries strengthen our economy and improve lives.

Intellectual property protections—including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets—help create an environment where innovators can invest, take risks, and turn new ideas into products and technologies. Protecting those rights is increasingly important as the United States faces intense global competition for technological leadership.

As part of the The American Edge Project, a coalition of domestic organizations dedicated to promoting and protecting American innovation for the long term, TAPP has emphasized that American innovation is essential not only to economic growth but also to national security and individual freedom.

America’s innovators support millions of jobs, help businesses reach customers around the world, and develop technologies that can shape entire industries.

Still, America’s leadership cannot be taken for granted.

China is aggressively competing with the United States in artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing, biotechnology, and other critical technologies. China is rapidly expanding its technological capabilities while intellectual property theft by that country remains part of the challenge confronting American innovators. This makes protecting American intellectual property an economic and national security imperative.

During National IP Month, TAPP urges policymakers to support a strong innovation ecosystem that protects intellectual property, encourages private investment and research and development, and allows American companies—from startups to global technology leaders—to compete and succeed.

America has long prospered because people with bold ideas have had the freedom and incentives to pursue them. We should strengthen that tradition, not weaken it.

This National IP Month, TAPP celebrates America’s inventors, creators, entrepreneurs, researchers, and innovators—and calls on policymakers to protect the intellectual property rights that help keep America at the forefront of global innovation.