40 Fun Facts About Patents

Which US president, the only one granted a patent, designed a device to lift riverboats over shoals?

Abraham Lincoln received Patent No. 6,469 in 1849, more than a decade before he reached the White House. His inflatable bellows for stranded boats was never produced for practical use.

In which Swiss city did Albert Einstein work as a patent examiner while developing special relativity?

Bern is where Einstein spent seven years judging other people's inventions, among them a gravel sorter and an electric typewriter. He wrote his landmark 1905 papers while holding the job.

Which carmaker let its rivals use engineer Nils Bohlin's three-point seat belt patent free of charge?

Volvo gave the patent away in the interest of safety instead of charging rivals for it. The belt became standard equipment in its own cars in 1959.

Which Hollywood star co-patented a frequency-hopping radio system meant to stop enemies jamming Allied torpedoes?

Hedy Lamarr devised the scheme with composer George Antheil, who had once written a film score for sixteen synchronised player pianos. The US Navy turned the idea down, and the pair took it no further.

Which pop star co-patented shoes that hook onto stage pegs, letting dancers lean far past their centre of gravity?

Michael Jackson faked the 45-degree lean in the Smooth Criminal video with cables and a harness. To repeat it in concert, his team patented heels that hitch onto pegs rising from the floor.

Which vaccine pioneer chose not to patent his work, asking a TV interviewer whether anyone could patent the sun?

Jonas Salk told broadcaster Edward Murrow in 1955 that his polio vaccine belonged to the people. His backers had in fact looked into a patent and judged the methods probably not novel enough to earn one.

Which board game did Charles Darrow patent in 1935, decades after Lizzie Magie patented her similar Landlord's Game?

Monopoly went to Parker Brothers, which bought Magie's patent for $500 on learning Darrow was not the sole inventor. She had created her game to show the harm done when a few owners hold all the wealth.

Which inventor's first patent, for an electric vote recorder politicians refused to use, was followed by 1,092 more?

Thomas Edison decided after that flop never again to waste time inventing things nobody wanted. His later patents covered the phonograph, electric lighting and the movie camera.

Which American landmark was covered by a US design patent in 1879, while it was still being built?

The Statue of Liberty was covered by patent D11,023 seven years before it was dedicated in New York Harbor. Its French sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, was protecting the look of the monument, not any mechanism.

Which carmaker announced in 2014 that it would not sue anyone using its electric vehicle patents in good faith?

Tesla took down the wall of patents in the lobby of its Palo Alto headquarters as part of the gesture. Elon Musk wrote that the real competition was the flood of petrol cars, not rival electric ones.

Which fairy-tale creature names firms that make nothing but buy up patents in order to demand licence fees?

Troll stuck as the insult after a 1994 educational video showed a green one guarding a bridge and demanding fees. Lawyers at Intel are often credited with spreading the label.

Which kind of intellectual property guards the Coca-Cola formula indefinitely, where a patent would have expired?

Trade secret protection needs no registration and lasts for as long as the recipe stays hidden. The company keeps its written copy of the formula in a vault on public display in Atlanta.

For which kind of device does the US Patent Office still insist that inventors supply a working model?

Perpetual motion machines are the one exception in the examiners' manual, because so many people have claimed to build one. Until 1880 American inventors generally had to send in a model with their application.

Which type of US patent covers how an invention works, protecting new processes, machines and compositions of matter?

Utility patents once lasted 17 years from the day they were issued. Since 1995 the clock has run for 20 years from the filing date instead, with extra time added when the patent office causes delays.

Which two-word legal term covers everything already public that could show an invention is not new?

Prior art need not be written down: a public talk, or simply using an invention in plain view, can count against a later application. Traditional medicine has been cited as well.

Royal 'letters patent', which gave patents their name, took that label from a Latin word meaning what?

Open is the meaning: letters patent were written on unfolded parchment for anyone to read, unlike sealed 'letters close'. An inventor today still has to publish the invention to win protection.

Which Italian republic passed the first general patent statute in 1474, giving inventors ten years of protection?

Venice barred copies of any new device made without its maker's consent, and historians usually call the law the first patent statute. Some argue it merely wrote down existing custom.

Which founding American document lets Congress grant inventors exclusive rights to their discoveries for limited times?

The Constitution lists the power in Article I, in a clause that covers authors' writings as well. James Madison was among the delegates who proposed it.

What name is given to cheaper copies of a medicine that rivals may sell once its patent expires?

Generic drugs contain the same active substance as the branded original and work the same way. Makers of the original sometimes find ways to stretch their patents and hold them off, a practice known as evergreening.

Which city is home to the World Intellectual Property Organization, the UN agency for international patent filings?

Geneva has hosted the agency since it began work on 26 April 1970, a date now marked every year as World Intellectual Property Day. One filing there can start claims in over 150 countries.

Which rival's lawyer filed a telephone claim at the US Patent Office on the same day as Alexander Graham Bell's?

Elisha Gray's lawyer lodged his caveat on 14 February 1876, with a diagram much like one Bell later drew in his own notebook. Arguments over who copied whom have never died down.

Which aviation pioneer did the Wright brothers sue for years, saying his ailerons copied their patented controls?

Glenn Curtiss lost the first ruling in 1910 and an appeal in 1914, yet the fight dragged on. It ended in 1917, when the US government pressed both firms into a patent pool so that warplanes could be built.

Which carmaker refused to pay royalties on George Selden's automobile patent and won his appeal in 1911?

Henry Ford persuaded the court that his engines were based on the Otto engine, not the Brayton type in the patent. Selden, a patent lawyer, had filed in 1879 but was not granted it until 1895.

Which photography giant had to abandon instant cameras and pay Polaroid over $900 million for infringing its patents?

Kodak had once been a customer for Polaroid's polarising products. When it launched instant cameras of its own in 1976, Polaroid sued and asked for $12 billion.

Which online retailer patented one-click ordering in 1999 and later charged Apple $1 million to use it?

Amazon kept the patent until it expired in September 2017. Apple took its licence in 2000 and went on to add the feature to the iTunes Store.

Samuel Hopkins won the first US patent in 1790 for a better way of making which soap and bleaching ingredient?

Potash was made by soaking wood ashes in water in a pot, which is how it got its name. George Washington signed the patent himself.

Which Secretary of State headed the first US patent review board, though he never patented his own improved plough?

Thomas Jefferson at first opposed patents altogether, then spent three years leading the three-person board that judged every application. He left his plough unpatented, as a gift to posterity.

Which television pioneer beat RCA in a patent contest thanks partly to a blackboard sketch from his school days?

Philo Farnsworth had drawn his idea for electronic television for a chemistry teacher, and the drawing was reproduced as evidence. He had earlier refused $100,000 from RCA for his patents.

The first US patent pool, formed in 1856, ended years of lawsuits among rival makers of which household item?

Sewing machines were caught in a thicket of rival patents nicknamed the Sewing Machine War, until Elias Howe, Isaac Singer and others pooled theirs. The pool lasted until its last patent expired in 1877.

Which Smithsonian museum shares the Old Patent Office Building, where Walt Whitman read to wounded soldiers?

The National Portrait Gallery shares the building with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. During the Civil War its halls served as a barracks, a hospital and a morgue.

Which American novelist held three patents, among them a self-pasting scrapbook and a history trivia game?

Mark Twain's scrapbook, whose pages of dried glue needed only moistening, was the most commercially successful of the three. The third patent was for a garment strap meant to replace suspenders.

Which everyday item did Margaret Knight's machine fold, an idea she won back after a machinist patented it first?

Paper bags with flat bottoms were Knight's breakthrough, and machinist Charles Annan patented the machine after seeing her model being built. She challenged him and received her own patent in 1871.

Which ancient invention did lawyer John Keogh patent in 2001 to mock Australia's automatic innovation patents?

The wheel sailed through as a 'Circular Transportation Facilitation Device', because such applications were granted after only a formalities check. Keogh and the patent office were each awarded an Ig Nobel Prize.

The discoverers of insulin signed their 1923 patent over to which Canadian institution for a token one dollar?

The University of Toronto received the patent so that nobody else could lock the treatment up for profit. Two of the discoverers had doubted whether patenting a medicine was ethical at all.

Which American university's cancer-prone laboratory mouse became the first mammal ever to be patented?

Harvard gave the commercial rights to DuPont, the chemical firm that had funded the research. Canada's Supreme Court rejected the same patent in 2002.

Which German city houses the headquarters of the European Patent Office, which also has a branch near The Hague?

Munich is the seat of the office, whose examiners decide whether an application deserves a patent. A classic European patent is not one Europe-wide right but a bundle of national patents.

Which architect of Florence Cathedral's dome received a 1421 patent for a river boat built to carry marble?

Filippo Brunelleschi is often called the first person in the Western world to receive a patent. His vessel was meant to bring goods along the River Arno for less money than usual.

Which law signed by Barack Obama awards a US patent to whoever files first, not whoever thought of the idea first?

The America Invents Act made the filing date decisive from March 2013. It scrapped the 'interference' contests in which near-simultaneous inventors had fought over who got there first.

England's first known patent, granted by Henry VI in 1449, gave a Flemish craftsman sole rights to make what?

Stained glass was needed for the windows of Eton College, and John of Utynam received a 20-year grant for his method. He was a master glass-maker who had come over from Flanders.

The Supreme Court's 1980 ruling in Diamond v. Chakrabarty allowed a patent on a bacterium engineered to digest what?

Crude oil was the target: General Electric hoped the microbe would treat spills. An examiner had refused the application because living things were thought unpatentable, and the Court split 5–4.