Patent Number Search
 
|
Patent Number Search
Many times, a patent is cited in literature by means of its patent number only. A common and simple patent search, then, is to search by patent number. The USPTO has made available a search interface that makes a number search quick and easy. A search for the first utility patent retrieves Utility Patent Number 1, which is dated July 13, 1836. Filed by John Ruggles of Thomaston, Maine, it is a patent for "a new useful improvement or improvements on locomotive-engines used on railroads and common roads by which inclined planes and hills may be ascended and heavy loads drawn up the same with more facility and economy than heretofore, and by which evil effects of frost, ice, snows, and mud on the rail causing the wheels to slide are obviated." A search for the first design patent retrieves Design Patent Number 1, which is a handwritten 1842 patent filed by George Bruce of New York for "new and improved Printing Types". Readers with a sharp eye may detect something curious about these patents. George Washington signed the first Patent Act on 10 April 1790. The act "put the burden of examining patent applications, and the models that accompanied most of them, upon a board consisting of the Secretary of State (the Thomas Jefferson), the Secretary of War (Henry Knox), and the Attorney General (Edmund Randolph). They were authorized to issue a patent 'if they shall deem the invention or discovery sufficiently useful or important' and to fix the term at not more than fourteen years" (see Stacy V. Jones, 1971, The Patent Office New York: Praeger Publishers, p. 5). If the first patent law went into effect in 1790, why is it that the first utility and design patents did not appear until 1836 and 1842, respectively? The answer is that a disasterous fire occurred at the Patent Office in 1836. All of the patents filed with the Office up until that time (including the first United States patent) were lost. New patents issued after the fire of 1836 began with patent number 1. However, painstaking work -- including the locating of copies of the same patents held elsewhere -- has culminated in the reconstruction of just over 9,900 of the first United States patents that were destroyed in the 1836 fire. Among those eventually recovered was a copy of the very first United States patent. Issued on 31 July 1790 to Samuel Hopkins "of the city of Philadelphia" who "hath discovered an Improvement, not known or used before, such Discovery, in the making of Potash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process ...," the first patent was signed by George Washington and Edmund Randolph. The back of the patent was endorsed by Thomas Jefferson. For details about the first United States patent. The approximately 9,900 patents that were recovered from the disasterous fire of 1836 are referred to as the X-Patents because they were subsequently designated with an X followed by their original number. Almost 2,000 of these patents have been entered into the USPTO database. To find the first United States patent at the USPTO website, then, type the following Patent Number search: x1 To see all of the available X-Patents, type the following search: x |
