The Nineties in America - Salem Press (2009)

legal disputes regarding inventions. Cor-
porations and universities hired re-
searchers and usually owned any inven-
tions those employees created at work.
In 1990, inventors filed 163,575 patent
applications. The USPTO, staffed by
approximately 1,500 examiners, pro-
cessed most applications within eigh-
teen months, compared to a two-year
wait in the 1980’s. Annually, the number
of applications significantly increased,
and review times also grew during the
1990’s, reaching twenty-five months by
the end of the decade.
In the 1990’s, USPTO examiners
evaluated invention applications sub-
mitted by U.S. and international inven-
tors. Canadian inventors secured pat-
ents though their nation’s patent office
and often also filed for U.S. or foreign
patents. Approximately 55 percent of
the 109,728 U.S. patents approved in
1992 were issued to U.S. inventors, with
22 percent of the patents being granted
to Japanese inventors and 7 percent to
Germans. Many U.S. inventors also
sought patents in other countries, espe-
cially Japan, where technological com-
petition from industries necessitated
patent protection. Political changes in Europe, par-
ticularly German reunification and socioeconomic
reform efforts in the former Soviet Union, impacted
1990’s markets for inventions.
The USPTO received less federal funding in the
1990’s and relied on increased patent fees approved
by the U.S. Congress, collecting several hundred
million dollars annually. Costs to maintain a patent
for the standard seventeen-year protection period
were approximately $6,700, which hindered many
individual and small business inventors. By the mid-
1990’s, inventions enhanced the USPTO’s opera-
tions when that office permitted inventors to fax ap-
plications and considered security and encrypting
concerns for future electronic filing online. In 1998,
the USPTO added text of post-1976 patents to its on-
line database (www.uspto.gov).

Innovations Early 1990’s computer-related inven-
tions inspired other inventors whose creations ex-
panded consumers’ options for communication and

entertainment. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a Euro-

pean Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)

physicist, created a program to transmit text mes-

sages, connecting CERN scientists’ computers in-

ternationally. This World Wide Web became pub-

licly available. Within three years, Marc Andreessen

invented a graphical browser, known as Mosaic,

which showed images to supplement text. The rap-

idly evolving Internet attracted several hundred mil-

lion new users yearly during the 1990’s. Online ser-

vices, particularly shopping and banking, appealed

to many people, including hackers and identity

thieves who took advantage of security vulnerabili-

ties. Some computer scientists created software,

such as Invention Machine Lab, to assist aspiring in-

ventors.

Inventions enhanced medical knowledge and ap-

plications, particularly surgical, pharmaceutical,

and equipment innovations. In the early 1990’s,

W. French Anderson utilized gene therapy for treat-

ment. Genetics researcher J. Craig Venter used ex-

The Nineties in America Inventions
457

1990

Hubble Space Telescope

World Wide Web

1991

Digital answering

machine

V-chip (television

blocking receiver)

1992

Smart pill (computer-

controlled medication

delivery)

1993

Blue LED (light-emitting

diode)

Global positioning system

(GPS)

Pentium processor

1994

HIV protease inhibitor

1995

DVD technology

Java computer language

1996

Web TV

1997

Gas-powered fuel cell

Nonmechanical digital

audio player

Wi-Fi wireless networking

1998

Viagra (erectile

dysfunction drug)

1999

Tekno Bubbles (blacklight

bubbles)

Time Line of Select 1990’s Inventions