By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 1984, The Syracuse Newspapers
An electric toothpick? A parachute that you wear like a hat? How
about a flame-retardant cigarette?
You're right. They're all patently absurd. But they're also patentable.
Ideas like that cross the desks at the United States Patent Office
just about every day. In fact, the Patent Office gets about 4,000
patent applications, on the average, every single working day.
That's a lot of ideas. A lot of them go back out through the mails
as inventions. The Patent Office granted 59,715 patents last year
out of 107,704 applications.
A lot of those ideas come from ordinary people, those who aren't
engineers or scientists. Experts estimate that more than 2 million
Americans are working on inventions on a regular or part-time
basis.
Even though more than half of all the U.S. patent applications
were approved last year, that doesn't mean the inventors were
successful. Success is measured by a tougher scale, according
to official figures.
Only 1 percent of all inventions actually succeed, these figures
show. But only 10 percent of those few—in other words, only
about 1 in 1,000 ever really pay off by supplying royalties to
their inventors.
It's not difficult to get a patent, which is actually nothing
more than a government license granting an exclusive 17-year monopoly
on an invention.
The power to do so is written in the Constitution, in Article
One, Section Eight. It gives Congress the power "to promote
the Progress of Science and Useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to the respective
Writings 4and Discoveries."
Those "Writings and Discoveries" have to pass the scrutiny
of the Patent Office's examiners first, however. They'll turn
down ideas that aren't new and different, and they'll also want
a clear demonstration that the idea—the gizmo or gadget or
whatever—actually works.
If the examiners think you've got something unique, you've got
a patent. All you've got to come up with is $150 for the basic
fee, as long as you're an amateur. Pros are charged $300.
There was no charge at all for the inventor of the wheel, since
there was no such thing as a patent 5,000 or so years ago when
somebody first stuck a flat, round disc onto an axle.
(Just think - if there had been patents in those days, the wheel
might be known as the Johnson or the Wapingo.)
And the same goes for the lever (much older than the wheel)
and the bow and arrow. But a lot of what we take for granted actually was patented. Take, for
example:
The list goes on and on. Take a look at just three recent inventions:
From MCI Communications, a nationwide paging system that will
tell users the telephone number of the person who's trying to
call them. (Just the thing for avoiding those calls from your
*brother-in-law Larry, who's trying to get you to pay up that
$40 you owe.)
From a California company, a jukebox plays videos, at 50 cents
a play or three for $1. And from Federal Telephone, a phone
shaped in the, ahem, form of a young lady. (No jokes, please;
these folks are serious.)
technofile:
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