On April 10, 1790, President George Washington signed the Patent Act of 1790 which became the nation’s first patent law and laid the foundation for the patent system used today. The Patent Act protected inventors’ inventions for the first time in American history by granting them the sole and exclusive right to make and use their inventions for a profit for a period of 14 years.

President Washington and Congress passed the Patent Act based on Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution that states "Congress shall have the power...to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." This is often called the Intellectual Property Clause or Patent Clause.

The Patent Act of April 10, 1790 also defined a U.S. patent as "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement thereon not before known or used." The Patent Act granted the Patent Board members the power to grant patents to applicants, and applicants had to provide patent specifications, drawings, and, if possible, of model. Upon review of the patent application, a board member would issue a patent to the applicant if the invention or discovery was deemed "sufficiently useful and important."

Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State (at that time) and a renowned inventor, became America’s first administrator of the US patent system and its first patent examiner. Jefferson actually personally reviewed each of the first few patent applications. However, Jefferson quickly realized that patent-examining was too time-intensive for Cabinet members. So, he delegated the responsibility to other members of the State Department, until the Patent Office was created in 1802.

In 1790, Samuel Hopkins received the very first U.S. patent for a process of making potash (a substance made from the ash of burned plants to make soap and other items). At that time, fees for patents cost between $4 and $5.

Up until July 1836, patents were issued by name and date instead of a number. Then, in December 1836, a fire destroyed thousands of patent records and only a few thousand patent records were properly restored. The restored patents were issued a number beginning with an "X" and called the "X-Patents," and the patents that could not be restored were cancelled.

Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued over five million patents to inventors. Also, modern U.S. patent law follows a first-to-invent patent system, i.e. where the first individual to invent (and not just the first to file for the patent) holds the right to the invention. Title 35 of the United States Code lays out much of the authority on U.S. patent law. Finally, under current US patent law, the term of patent is 20 years from the filing date of the patent (plus any allowed extensions by the USPTO).

NOTE: In 1959, Chester Carlson, a patent agent, designed a new copying system for patents because he became tired of using carbon paper to make copies for patent application. Carlson demonstrated his new machine to IMB and called it xerography. Carlon’s ideas eventually laid the foundation for the creation of the Xerox machine.