On the 100th anniversary of my father Ronald Cohen’s birth, I look back at two public-health innovations he helped develop: a blocked-flue safety control designed to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning in New York City tenements in the 1950s, and a pre-World Wide Web computerized emergency-response network for hazardous-materials incidents in New Jersey in the 1980s. His experience also taught me an early lesson about patents: making an invention available for the public good does not mean that its inventor should go unrecognized. Looking back, I realize that my career protecting innovation followed my father’s work in public health more closely than I once understood.