According to Peter Andreas - absolutely. Not just the Gilded Age, but from the founding fathers' time onwards, Andreas argues, the USA has been made by illicit trade, including intellectual piracy. Alexander Hamilton "enthousiastically encouraged intellectual piracy and technology smuggling, especially in the textile industry". Hamilton acknowledged that European countries' laws forbade the exportation of machinery that were protected intellectual property in that country, but that did not stop him from encouraging such intellectual piracy.

In the 19th century, Andreas goes on to explain, British authors were "outraged by the widespread copying of their works in the United States, where the government was unwilling to do anything about it". Only when American authors such as Mark Twain themselves started to complain about having their intellectual property stolen, the US government began to implement copyright standards. The initial US Copyright Act of 1831 did not include international intellectual property right.

Illicit trade of other goods than intellectual property also played a big role in US history. In the years leading up to the American revolution, American merchants were "leading players" in the transatlantic smuggling of molasses from the West Indies, to be used in distilleries. American settlers also made monkey by illegally supplying the French during the Seven Years' War. The crackdown on this illicit importation of goods by British authorities led to the burning of customs vessels and "the tarring and feathering of customs agents".

This same smuggling network was what allowed the Colonial rebels to win in the Revolution, according to Andreas. Through the same networks and smuggling techniques revolutionary troops were provided with the gunpowder needed to take on the British military.

Andreas transposes the US American history of smuggling and intellectual piracy with the current leading role the country takes in attempting to combat Chinese intellectual property theft. He argues that the USA did not start to develop intellectual property protection legislation until it had developed industries and property to develop. The kickstarting of these industries - textile most notably - was done with machinery and techniques that were stolen from European countries, a practice actively encouraged by the ruling elite.

The stealing of intellectual property and using it without scrutiny abroad was commonplace in the 18th and 19th centuries, and while European countries had strong copyright laws to protect their authors, they were lacking universal patent protection in industries which they had developed less than the competition. French legislation on intellectual property in the 18th century specifically omitted medicine from protection clauses, meaning that medicine developed in the US could be stolen with impunity. British legislation while strict on capital-intensive industries such as textile and steel did not cover chemicals, in order to counter continental European supremacy when it came to the chemical industry. Germany did not offer protection on food, chemicals or pharmaceuticals. Outside of Europe, Japan, India and Brazil for example similarly legislated weakly so that they could benefit from the supremacy of other countries in certain fields.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, transnational smuggling of intellectual properties was common, and often encouraged by governments. The American industrial revolution was built on stolen intellectual property. British textile makers were encouraged to come to the United States and take smuggled technology with them, despite the stringent British law against this. Workers from other European countries similarly came to the United States to work, occasionally taking with them technologies from back home that they hoped to sell to industries forming in the USA, breaking the laws of their homecountries in the process.

Source:

Peter Andreas - Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America

Peter Andreas - Gangster's Paradise: The Untold History of the United States and International Crime