Jimmy Carter

“ IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fifth. ”

“ As the progress of science and technology is fundamental to the economic and social welfare of our society, so is the patent system essential to the advance of science and technology. This relationship is recognized in the first Article of our Constitution, which empowers the Congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" by securing for limited times to inventors an exclusive right to their discoveries. ”