Patent Law Practice Center

In Closing Black History Month, a Celebration of African-American Inventors from USPTO

As February draws to a close, we at the Patent Law Practice Center wanted to share in the USPTO’s celebration of African-American inventors and their role in the history of the patent office. In USPTO Director David Kappos’ blog, Director’s Forum, offers a look at “the invaluable contributions African-Americans have made, and continue to make, to the success of the American Experiment…”

In the article entitled, “In Celebration of Black History”, Kappos discusses the first African-American inventors to receive patents,

Among those to whom we owe our nation’s success are a number of innovative African-Americans who distinguished themselves in the field of intellectual property, even before the American Civil War and Emancipation. Although slaves were prohibited from receiving patents on their inventions in the antebellum period, free black inventors were not. Thomas L. Jennings, born in 1791, was 30 when he received a patent for a dry-cleaning process, making him what historians believe was the first black inventor to receive a patent. Jennings’s income went mostly to his abolitionist activities, and in 1831 he became assistant secretary for the First Annual Convention of the People of Color in Philadelphia. (more…)