U.S. PATENT & TRADEMARK OFFICE ISSUES TEN MILLIONTH PATENT
On June 19, 2018, nearly 228 years after the first U.S.patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for a process of making potash, U.S. Patent No. 10,0000 was granted to Raytheon Company for Coherent LADAR Using Intra-Peel Quadrature Detection. I wonder if the Founding Fathers, including President George Washington who signed the first patent, ever thought we would reach this milestone.
In order to “promote the progress of science and useful arts”, at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 the founding fathers granted to “authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” From these words sprang a patent system that spurs innovation by granting temporary monopoly rights to inventors in exchange for their disclosure of their invention to the public. The inventor benefits from the right for 20 years to exclude all others from making, using, selling, offering to sell and importing their patented invention. In exchange, the public receives a detailed description of the inner workings of the invention, which often times leads to further innovations and improvements.
It has long been rumored that, in 1899, then Commissioner of Patents Charles Holland Duell said “everything that can be invented has been invented.” Mr. Duell served as the twenty-fifth Commissioner of the United States Patent Office at the turn of the last century (from 1898-1901). There is little proof that Duell actually made this statement, and a number of authors have attempted to bust this myth over the years.
A quick look at Duell’s accomplishments as Commissioner of Patents would lead one to doubt that he made such a statement. His reports suggest that the Patent Office was experiencing significant growing pains during his tenure. Issues of office overcrowding, storing of soft copies of patents and a shortage of examiners to deal with the increased flow of applications appeared in his annual reports to Congress. Apparently Duell had some success in convincing Congress to fund the hiring of additional examiners when the wait time for a newly filed application to be examined was reduced to six weeks (according to current USPTO statistics, the wait time for a first office action is now 15.5 months!). The Division of Classification was also organized under Duell’s tenure to deal with a growing diversity of inventions.
A look at the state of industry and technology at the dawn of the 20th Century is further proof that no one in their right mind would have made such a statement at that time. By the end of the 19th century, the principles of generating electricity had been solved and production of electricity on a large scale was just ramping up. In 1899, German chemist Felix Hoffmann patented aspirin, and Bayer registered its name as a trademark. The petroleum industry was mounting a comeback as the trust creating the behemoth Standard Oil Company was formed in 1899. On August 5, 1899, Henry Ford resigned from the Edison Corporation and founded the Detroit Automobile Company. The founder of the Edison Corporation, Thomas Alva Edison was busy working on a number of inventions for which he was ultimately awarded 1,093 U.S. patents, including US Patent No. 425,761 which issued in 1900 for the Incandescent Lamp. Also in 1899, after Wilbur Wright had written a letter of request to the Smithsonian Institution for information about flight experiments, the Wright Brothers designed their first aircraft. In 1900, a 21 year old by the name of Albert Einstein became an assistant patent examiner at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property after graduating from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschulethe in Zurich.
Without a doubt, the state of inventions and technology expanded at a meteoric rate in the first quarter of the 20th Century. At the end of 1899, a total of 640,166 patents had been issued in the then 109 year existence of the Patent Office. By the end of 1925 and additional 927,873 U.S. Patents had been issued. Patent No. 5,000,000 issued a mere 27 years ago when a then 23 year old by the name of Rick Martin was a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. While impressive, that rate of growth has continued to climb. At present, over 300,000 U.S. Patents are issued every year!
From this exponential growth, it is clear that the patent system has been instrumental in driving innovation. To celebrate this milestone, the USPTO unveiled a new patent cover design beginning with the 10 millionth patent and has prepared a multimedia presentation on the history of the US patent system. If history is any indication, we are nowhere near the point where “everything that can be invented has been invented.” In fact, at the current rate of growth, many of you reading this article will likely live to see the issuance of US Patent No. 20,000,000.
Do you have an idea for the next Process of Making Potash or Coherent LADAR? If so, contact us to discuss how we can help you protect these valuable assets!
