The United States Trademark and Patent Office unveiled the new patent cover for issued patents on Sunday at SXSW in Austin, Texas. The redesign is only the second change to the cover in the past century, and overall, the cover has only been altered less than a dozen times.
The new cover will debut sometime this summer. The exact date of release, however, is unclear as the first patent to don the new will be issued patent number 10,000,000. The most recent round of patents to issue were in the realm of 9,720,000. This count is a misleading as the counter was reset to 1 in 1836, 46 years after the first patent was signed by George Washington.
The Commissioner of Patents Drew Hirshfeld described the new cover as portraying “a modern day flair while reflecting the history of patent covers by taking design cues from the 19th and 20th century patent cover designs, mostly through the use of script typography and graphic ornaments.” The overarching goal was to emphasize the importance the patent has to the inventors and its significance in representing American invention and ingenuity.
To coincide with the cover redesign, the USPTO is setting up a campaign for writers to highlight the “10 patented technologies that propelled” various industries forward or took them in a new direction. The Ten for 10 Million campaign is not currently in full effect, but should be early April.
To learn more about the history of the patent system and how your invention could be the first patent with the new design, you can visit the USPTO’s Official page for 10 Million Patents.
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