What do drinking a can of Dale's Pale Ale, riding A-Basin on a Never Summer snowboard, or camping Guanella Pass in a Coleman sleeping bag have in common?

Besides being quintessential Colorado pastimes, each of those activities is touched in some way by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

While the USPTO might not be the federal agency at the forefront of most people's minds, you'd be surprised at how intertwined it is with some of the products most of us use frequently.

That's because patents are an essential part of many of our everyday activities, like that iPhone you may be reading this on. Everything from the visual voicemail feature to the scrolling technology has a patent.

Your dog's favorite Kong (based in Golden) chew toy? There's a patent for that. Smart Wool socks, based in Steamboat Springs? There's a patent for that, too. Even Louis Pasteur filed a patent in 1873 for "an improvement in brewing beer and ale" that helped keep air out of the fermentation process, something the thousands of home-brewers and hundreds of brewpubs in Colorado can appreciate.

We enjoy the world's strongest intellectual property system, thanks to the foresight and vision of our founding fathers, who more than 200 years ago enshrined in our constitution a principle that created an ideal balance between the ownership and sharing of new ideas and discoveries.

Since then, the USPTO has granted millions of patents, adding "fuel of interest to the fire of genius," as Abraham Lincoln described our patent system in a speech on invention in 1858. Lincoln, the only president to ever hold a patent, counted the creation of patent laws as one of the top three most significant events in history, next to the discovery of America and the invention of printing.

On Monday, we will celebrate another milestone in the history and development of the U.S. patent system when we cut the ribbon on a new satellite patent office in Denver. The office will be the second of only four regional patent offices planned nationwide.

Colorado's selection is a testament to our state's reputation as a hotbed for innovation, creativity and entrepreneurialism. It's a recognition of our state's pioneering and exploring roots, from the 19th century gold miners who chartered their own course through the Rocky Mountain West, to the modern-day entrepreneurs who are blazing new trails through fields like bioscience, clean energy, high-tech, and advanced manufacturing. Our state has always been led by visionaries and risk-takers who dared to dream big. And this satellite patent office joins things like crowdfunding and the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network as yet another tool in their toolbox as they continue to innovate and drive our economy.

In fact, the idea of having multiple regional offices came from Colorado, the culmination of nearly a decade of work by the intellectual property legal community, local municipal and business leaders across the state, multiple governors, and Colorado's congressional delegation. In the Senate, Mark Udall and I wrote a provision in the 2011 America Invents Act to establish three satellite patent offices by 2014.

That provision alone did not guarantee that Colorado would be selected as a satellite patent office location. We worked with a core group of economic development and business leaders around the state, including the Metro Denver EDC, Accelerate Colorado, and the Colorado Bioscience Association, along with our congressional delegation and municipal leaders to make a winning case for why Colorado was a perfect fit to host a satellite office.

On Monday, we'll celebrate the best of Colorado: Democrats and Republicans, urban and rural leaders, entrepreneurs and executives across all sectors, all working together to put differences aside and do what's best for our state. And we'll begin Denver's chapter in the centuries-old story of the world's greatest intellectual property system.

U.S. Sen. Michael F. Bennet is a Democrat from Colorado.