While you're preparing to celebrate Constitution Day (either on your own on the 17th or here at Fondren on the 18th), take a moment to appreciate how America's IP system was originally formed within Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
It's a brief statement and perhaps vague, but it is the building block on which all of our modern US IP concepts were built. It outlines the continued laws that give authors, creators, and inventors (or owners) exclusive rights to their creations, but only for a specific limited time. Length of copyright protection has significantly increased across the years, but we haven't strayed too far from the original principles.
Perhaps the most significant change is related to marks (trademarks). There is no specific mention of them in the articles and clauses that lay out other forms of IP--copyrights, patents, and trade secrets. Congress didn't gain power over trademark legislation until much later, and that was under the Commerce Clause.
See the explanation of Federal power over trademarks here.
For more on the powers given to Congress over IP, and the associated section of the Constitution, see a general explanation here and the details on each here.
I'd like to close by sharing a patent for the ink formula (oak gall based) used to write the Constitution, or perhaps some other component of the document, but wasn't able to find anything from the correct era. Searching for late 18th century patents is particularly challenging.
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