The Constitution of United States empowers the Congress to enact laws relating to IPR and especially patents in Article I, Section 8 and the Patent Law has been codified in Title 35 of United States Code. The Patent Law is enshrined with the specifications and conditions of Patentability, and it establishes the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) which is solely responsible for the granting of patents.
ISSUING OF PATENT #10,000,000
USPTO issued Patent Number 10,000,000 on 19th June 2018, signifying the rich history and robustness of the Intellectual Property System of United States. The first Patent was signed in 1790 by George Washington for the making of an ingredient for a fertilizer.
Patent 10 million owned by Raytheon Company, published for “Coherent Ladar Using Intra-Pixel Quadrature Detection” has exemplified the reach of American innovations and creations, with applications in various fields such as autonomous vehicles, defense systems, devices for medical imaging etc. The patent describes a mode of bouncing the lasers off of a target to find out their range and their velocity.
Raytheon, applied for this patent in 2015. This invention ameliorates the ability of laser radars, using reflected light to measure speed and distance for the identification and tracking of various objects. A problem faced was the use of large laser radars which would lead to high fluctuation of light, gathering the humungous amount of data which would need processing. The laser radar was redesigned to overcome this problem. The spreading of data across many pixels which had their own processing electronics and reporting only the bits of data which was needed by the sensor in the form of compressed data vanquished the problem.
PACE OF INNOVATIONS
The pace of United States Patents has gained momentum over years and the time gap between each milestone has decreased drastically.
It can be clearly deduced from the graph that there has been an increase in the publications over shorter durations. It shows the unbelievable explosion of the utility patents over the past two decades.
Within 120 years of the formation of USPTO, the millionth patent was reached. The gap between each milestone has shortened in a progressive manner. US 9,000,000 Patent was published just 3 years prior to this patent which was only 4 months after US 8,000,000 Patent. The publishing of US 10,000,000 has closed by 69 days to 3 years and 2 months.
Patent 10,000,000 is the first patent to receive a completely new patent cover design making it unique, signifying the representation of the document. This patent cover has been changed only after 100 years for the millionth patent.
CONCLUSION
With the rapid pace of change, the patent system of patent office has gained an enormous amount of importance in the daily lives of people. Quoting Wilber Ross, Secretary of Commerce “Innovation has been the lifeblood of this country since its founding”, it can be concluded that innovations bring about change and vice versa and they are the dynamic force for the development of the economy.
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