Tuesday, December 31, 2013

U.S. Patent Statistics and Numbers for 2013


The USPTO issued 305,081 patents in 2013, an increase of 10.2 percent over 2012. The agency also published 347,148 utility and plant patent applications, an increase of 4.7 percent over the previous year. The total number of U.S. patent documents published in 2013 increased to 752,229, another all-time high. Table 1 shows the number of documents by type.

Table 1. US Patents by Type Issued in 2013*


TypeTotal
Utility patents279,899
Reissue patents844
Design patents23,479
Plant patents846
SIRs13
Applications347,148

*Based on preliminary data from the USPTO website. Totals may change after the fact due to withdrawn patents and published applications. 

On August 6, the USPTO reached another milestone, issuing patent no. 8,500,000. Design patents are rapidly approaching the 700,000 mark; it is likely that D700,000 will be issued in February 2014. 

The USPTO abolished the Statutory Invention Registration (SIR) Program in March. The number of SIRs published during the 28 years the program was in existence was approximately 2,260. The number of SIRs per year has steadily decreased since the USPTO began publishing applications in 2001. Only 13 SIRs were published this year, almost twice as many as in 2012. 

Table 2. US Patent Number Ranges, Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2013

TypeFirst NumberLast Number
Utility patent8,341,7628,621,661
Reissue patentRE43,844RE44,688
Design patentD673,356D696,835
Plant patentPP23,288PP24,134
SIRH2,274H2,287
Utility application2013/00000012013/347149
Plant application2013/00079302013/347159

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Tangle toy puzzle


A few days ago I took my four-year old daughter to get a flu shot. As a reward for being brave and not crying (too much) the nurse gave her a puzzle-toy called a Tangle(R). Turns out it was patented in 1985 (US 4509929) by Richard Zawitz. There are several interesting things about this toy. First, it has one of the least descriptive patent titles I've seen since the Koosh ball: "Annular support device with pivotal segments". Second, prior to filing a patent application, Zawitz filed several copyright registrations under the title "Zawitz tangle ornamental sculpture". Finally, in 1993 Zawitz was granted a design patent (D334,416) on the individual segments that make up the toy.

Humble Egg Carton Invented by Canadian 100 Years Ago

Canadian newspaperman Joseph Coyle invented the humble egg carton nearly one hundred years ago. Coyle was not the first inventor to tackle the problem of transporting eggs safely, but his carton design, which he patented in the US (US1269394) and Canada (CA181662) in 1918, was one of the most successful. A number of egg carton designs were patented from the late 1890s forward. These are classified under CPC code B65D85/32+.

Coyle continued inventing well into his 70s and received more than a dozen patents relating to egg cartons, among other things. In 1943, he received his last patent (CA415836) for a carton suitable for holding and transporting fruit.

The iconic 12-egg carton that is still in use today was designed in the 1930s by Francis H. Sherman, who received design patent D95,291 in 1935.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

PatentScope Adds Canadian National Collection



An early Christmas present from the WIPO:

PatentScope now includes the Canadian national collection from ~1920 forward. No PDFs yet, it appears, but full text (based on OCR) is available for some patents. A few pre-1970s patents have IPC codes, so keyword searching may be required for some types of searches. This gives researchers another option for searching Canadian patents from the early 20th century forward.

Other national collections to be added in the next few months include the Eurasian Patent Office, Germany, and UK.