Twelve Patent Facts

On March 19, 1474, Venice passed the world’s earliest known law to grant and protect patents.
Around 50,000 patent applications were made from UK inventors in 2013. That is about one new British invention every 10 minutes.
The Japanese submit more than 470,000 a year.
US patents during 2013 464,573.
The second patent in England was for a monopoly on representing an image of the King.
The musical fly swatter was patented in the US in 1994. It played one tune when turned on and another when it hit something.
IBM has gained more patents than any other company in the US for the past 21 years.
US patent number 5528943, issued in 1996, was for a pregnant female crash test dummy.
Thomas Edison accumulated 2,332 patents worldwide for his inventions.
In 1998, the European patent office reported that the patent visitors most often wanted to see was one for sardine-flavored ice-cream. This was because nobody believed it until they saw it.
Abraham Lincoln was the only US president to hold a patent. It was for a device to lift boats over sandbanks.
There are 52,438 US patents for measuring and testing.