Inventing Fun, Facts & Trivia

"Everything" you always wanted to know
about the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
(and a Basic Primer on Patents & Trademarks)

• In 1997 there were 111,984 patents issued.  Of these, 17,639 (16%) were issued to independent inventors.
   
• There is only one U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; it is located in Arlington, Virginia.
   
• The USPTO employs approximately 6,000 people.
   
• The USPTO is totally fee funded — not one penny of taxpayer money supports it.
   
• A U.S. patent is granted by the U.S. government.  It grants a monopoly for a limited period of time on an invention that has been deemed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to be novel, non-obvious and useful.  A patent gives its holder the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invention that is claimed in the patent.
   
• A trademark is a brand name or symbol that identifies a product or service.
   
• A copyright protects an original work of expression (such as books, movies, artwork, game rules, etc.) by giving the copyright holder the right to exclude others from copying or commercially using the work without authorization.
   
• WWW site:  www.uspto.gov/
   
• The PTO fee to file a patent application is $385 for an independent inventor.  The total cost to obtain a patent, including issuance fees and attorney fees, is approximately, $4,000 to $5,000.
   
• A patent lasts 20 years from the date of the filing of a patent application.  It is enforceable only in the U.S.
   
• For basic information, the USPTO has a toll-free line, 1-800-PTO-9199.

Famous words about the Patent System

"The patent system added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius." Abraham Lincoln

"A country without a patent office and good patent laws is just a crab and can't travel anyway but sideways and backways." Sir Boss, a character in Mark Twain's "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"

"We must introduce the patent system. America has shown us how.  May our sister republic serve as our model in this."  A Swiss manufacturer to his countrymen upon returning home from the U.S. in the 1800s.  Switzerland introduces a patent system in 1888.

"We have looked about us to see what nations are the greatest, so that we can be like them.  We said, 'What is it that makes the United States such a great nation?'  and we investigated and found that it was patents and we will have patents."  1900, a Japanese commissioner in Washington to study the American Patent System

A Brief History of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

• On April 10, 1790, President George Washington signed the bill which laid the foundations of the modern American patent system.
   
• The U.S. patent system was unique;  for the first time in history the intrinsic right of an inventor to profit from his invention is recognized by law.  Previously, privileges granted to an inventor were dependent upon the prerogative of a monarch or upon a special act of a legislature.
   
• Thomas Jefferson was the first Patent Examiner.
   
• In 1790, the cost to obtain a patent was between $4 and $5.
   
• The first U.S. patent was granted on July 31, 1790, to Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vt., for an improvement in "the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process."
   
• Mary Kies of Killingly, Conn., was the first women to obtain a patent.  In 1809 she received a patent for a way to weave "straw with silk or thread."
   
• During the War of 1812, the British burned Washington.  The Patent Office was spared because Dr. William Thornton, Superintendent of Patents, pleaded with the British Commander not to "burn what would be useful to mankind."
   
• Daniel Webster eloquently explained the value of invention to the nation's economic well being when, in a speech in Congress in 1824, he declared that invention is the fruit of a man's brain, that industries grow in direct proportion to invention and that therefore the government must aid in progress by fostering the inventive genius of its citizens.
   
• On December 15, 1836, the Patent Office was completely destroyed by fire.  Lost were some 7,000 models, 9,000 drawings, and 230 books plus all records of patent applications and grants.
   
• During the Civil War, the Confederacy established its own Patent Office which issued 266 patents, a third of which concerned implements of war.
   
• 1880 - 1890, one of the greatest decades of invention of all time:  The trolley car, the incandescent light, the automobile, the cash register, the dynamo, the pneumatic tire, smokeless powder, transparent film, electrical welding, the cyanide process, the steam turbine, the aluminum manufacturing process, and the electric furnace are all invented or introduced.