A bit further even, 18th to late 19th century. The U.S. was stealing every kind of IP it could get from Europe, from patented inventions to reprinting publications ignoring copyright.
The history of Hollywood is also a fun read, it basically came into existence by filmmakers fleeing from Edison demanding people to buy licences for patented film cameras IIRC.
Regarding IP, the US developed exactly the same as China does now: First the country was underdeveloped and mostly agrarian. In this period it stole IP massively, bootstrapping its own intellectual niches in this way. After a while those niches build up significant output and want to protect their own IP from others. The country starts to create and enforce its own IP laws.
example source: https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-na...
The history of Hollywood is also a fun read, it basically came into existence by filmmakers fleeing from Edison demanding people to buy licences for patented film cameras IIRC.
Regarding IP, the US developed exactly the same as China does now: First the country was underdeveloped and mostly agrarian. In this period it stole IP massively, bootstrapping its own intellectual niches in this way. After a while those niches build up significant output and want to protect their own IP from others. The country starts to create and enforce its own IP laws.