Inventions
Definition Newly created or improved devices,
objects, substances, techniques, or processes
Inventions in the 1980’s established emerging fields in ma-
terials and genetic engineering, computing, and other spe-
cialties, enabling practical applications, enhancing life
quality, and invigorating the economy. Issues regarding the
treatment of inventions as intellectual property resulted in
new federal legislation and judicial forums that strength-
ened the U.S. patent system.
During the 1980’s, North American inventors sought
to create new objects and processes, as well as to im-
prove the design of existing inventions. In addition
to entirely new inventions, unique and substantial
improvements to existing devices would qualify for
patents, enabling inventors to benefit financially
from their inventions. Many inventions resulted from
people’s endeavors to solve particular problems or
to provide utilitarian products to address more gen-
eral concerns. They included devices or pharmaceu-
ticals that saved lives and combated diseases. Often,
inventors devised tools and other items designed to
reduce the time it took to perform work, whether in-
dustrial, business, or domestic.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Starting in 1790,
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is-
sued patents to inventors who filed applications to
patent innovative objects, designs, or processes. A
similar Canadian patent office was not founded un-
til the early twentieth century, and Canadian inven-
tors often secured U.S. patents to protect their intel-
lectual property rights. The USPTO commissioners
of patents and trademarks, serving in the Depart-
ment of Commerce, were usually patent attorneys
who had engineering or scientific qualifications and
passed an examination evaluating their knowledge
of patent law. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter ap-
pointed Sidney A. Diamond as USPTO commis-
sioner. Although Diamond was not a patent attor-
ney, he was an authority regarding trademark law
and sought to improve the patenting process.
The USPTO’s primary problems during the 1980’s
included the time required to review patent applica-
tions, especially those involving biotechnology. Such
applications could take two years or more. More-
over, the low fee for a patent application resulted in
the office being underfunded. In December, 1980,
President Carter signed the Patent Reform Act, im-
plementing higher patent fees, with the moneys
collected designated to computerize the USPTO. In-
ventors secured 56,650 patents during 1980. Women
inventors filed around 2 percent of U.S. patent ap-
plications at the decade’s beginning and, by 1988,
received 5.6 percent of patents.
Patent law in the 1980’s recognized the intellec-
tual property rights of the first person who had an
idea for a given invention, rather than the first per-
son actually to create the invention. Thus, someone
describing a concept in a patent application but go-
ing no further retained control of the invention,
even if someone else independently developed a
working prototype. The USPTO recognized that in-
ventors often required significant time between de-
veloping a concept and successfully inventing some-
thing tangible based on that concept. The office
therefore ensured that inventors would retain exclu-
sive rights to their inventions for seventeen years after
a patent was issued.Leadership After Diamond resigned, President
Ronald Reagan nominated as his replacement Ger-
ald J. Mossinghoff, an electrical engineer and at-
torney who had worked as a USPTO examiner and
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) lawyer. Beginning his duties in July, 1981,
Mossinghoff, who stated that the USPTO needed
modern resources to function effectively, noted that
the Patent Reform Act did not provide enough
funds for the office’s computer needs. In 1981, ap-
proximately twenty-eight hundred people worked at
the USPTO, which had an average yearly budget
of $116 million. By August of that year, inventors
had filed more than 100,000 applications with the
USPTO, of which 65 percent were approved.
Mossinghoff hired more examiners. The number
of USPTO examiners trained to evaluate applica-
tions rose from 780 in 1981 to 1,600 in 1989. Moss-
inghoff supported passage of legislation that would
to extend patents for drugs that the federal govern-
ment had not yet approved for sale. He spoke in Au-
gust, 1982, emphasizing the usefulness of computers
for USPTO examiners to search patent databases,
stressing that the office needed to begin automa-
tion.
When Mossinghoff resigned in December, 1984,
Donald J. Quigg, who had been USPTO deputy com-
missioner, became President Reagan’s appointee522 Inventions The Eighties in America