Monthly Archives: December 2013

U.S. Patent Statistics and Numbers for 2013

The USPTO issued 305,081 patents in 2013, an increase of 10.2 percent over 2012. The agency also published 347,148 utility and plant patent applications, an increase of 4.7 percent over the previous year. The total number of U.S. patent documents … Continue reading

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Tangle toy puzzle

A few days ago I took my four-year old daughter to get a flu shot. As a reward for being brave and not crying (too much) the nurse gave her a puzzle-toy called a Tangle(R). Turns out it was patented … Continue reading

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Humble Egg Carton Invented by Canadian 100 Years Ago

Canadian newspaperman Joseph Coyle invented the humble egg carton nearly one hundred years ago. Coyle was not the first inventor to tackle the problem of transporting eggs safely, but his carton design, which he patented in the US (US1269394) and … Continue reading

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PatentScope Adds Canadian National Collection

An early Christmas present from the WIPO: PatentScopenow includes the Canadian national collection from ~1920 forward. No PDFs yet, it appears, but full text (based on OCR) is available for some patents. A few pre-1970s patents have IPC codes, so … Continue reading

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