The Confounding Semiotics of 1983 Patents & Trademarks

For my own peculiar sensibility, the most accurate way to properly investigate the given year 1983 was through the lens of science. I can barely recall the year and the number itself holds little significance to me, but my thoughts were drawn to the inventions, devices, games and slogans that permeated my life, albeit probably below the radar. My admittedly broad question to myself was, what came out in 1983? What changed our lives? What about Rubik’s Snake? This circuitously led me to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

The idea behind the Patent & Trademark Office was, and still is, a noble one. Essentially, it was devised as a more-or-less foolproof way of protecting intellectual property, while simultaneously stimulating invention by virtue of its existence. Operating as a non-commercial division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the nobility factor comes from the fact that there have always been laws in place to limit the terms of a patent. In other words, after seventeen years (the current limit for a patent) an invention becomes in essence, public domain, and anyone can manufacture it, market it, learn from it, sell it to death - whatever. The patent cannot be renewed. This can also be seen as a means to limit monopolies, as well as nurturing a safe, competitive spirit among inventors.

Although it’s somewhat dry, it bears explaining a bit further. To wit: a patent is a protective document issued by the Patent & Trademark Office allowing the inventor to produce or sell their invention for the seventeen-year period. I found it interesting to learn that there are three types of patents. Utility patents cover the most ground: mechanical devices, machinery, drugs — everything from electronic games to nuclear reactor parts. Then there are design patents, which just protect the appearance of a product. Oddly, there are also plant patents, which protect invented, "asexually reproduced" varieties of plants. To receive a patent one has to rigorously describe the invention in strict, meticulous legalese, provide an accurate drawing, and declare why it’s an improvement over previous inventions of that type. It then sits for a lengthy one to two years at the Office (currently employing 5,000 people, paid for by you-know-who) before the patent is issued. The Office has to research and decide whether or not the invention is or is not an infringement, comparing and contrasting it to others of its type. During this waiting period, an inventor or company can use the term "Patent Pending", which still in theory protects the inventor even if a patent isn’t issued. The reason for that is because there is a secrecy code at the Patents & Trademarks Office. No one can speak about or discuss whether a patent is being considered or not, by anyone or any company. Which makes perfect sense really — the government knew deep down that corporations (not to mention people) would try to steal ideas to make a buck, so the seemingly vague secrecy code actually carries some weight.

In 1983, an average of about 1,000 patents were granted every single week. On a slow week, about 700 were granted, on a normal week the number hovered around 1,300. Well over 50,000 "things" were invented that year. I began to pore over every single invention granted a patent in ’83 by sifting through the Office’s weekly tome: the Patent Gazette. In a short time the process grew tiresome and meaningless, as every drawing looked the same, the names of inventions became more and more detailed and specific; the legalese absent of punctuation began to form its own emotionless poetry. What became interesting was at once the inventions that defied explanation, but also the language of the Patent & Trademark Office; the idiosyncratic and sometimes laughably alien language designated by the Government to label the anonymous widgets that relegate the order of our lives. And the trademarks — the Gazette’s second half - I wasn’t really counting on their sheer entertainment value. The many thousands of words, names and phrases that were protected in 1983 by our government, held as special, were stupefying.

Some important inventions did have their premiere in 1983. Medtronic, Inc. patented an improved pacemaker. In October, General Electric was granted a patent for an apparatus for stopping the operation of a nuclear reactor. Some high-tech inventions had a subversive element, for instance also appearing in October was a television or cable unscrambler, granted to Zenith. Alfred P. Novak of Floral Park, New York invented a "Device for the Automatic Editing, at the Receiver, of Unwanted Program Material From Broadcast Electric Signals", forecasting the invention of the Tivo system by over 15 years, whereby a home user can edit out commercials from their TV. Interestingly, Novak also was light years ahead of the phone company, when in 1981 he patented a caller-identifying device for the phone.

The titles of patented inventions often utilize sterile, generic words like "device" or "apparatus". On January 18^th, a patent was granted for a "Method & Apparatus For Drying A Liquid Product". On October 11^th, there came the "Apparatus for Washing An Aloe Vera Leaf". January 11^th brought us a "System For Rapidly Chilling Carcasses". Each issue of the Patent Gazette brings to the public hundreds of these anonymous sounding yet specific inventions. A sampling from August 2^nd’s issue showcased a "Sugar Maple Tree Naval Commemoration", an "Interproximal Toothbrush", a "Sealing and Lubricating System for a Dredge", an "Apparatus for Feeding Lifts of Limp Sheets", a "Centrifugal Governor", a "Hay Conditioner", a "Device to Take Up Refuse By Vacuum Intake Air", a "Small Reciprocating Pump", and a "Shin Guard".

As I progressed, I felt I was getting somewhere only if I effectively removed any inference to the inventor of the product, particularly if the inventor was associated with a well-known corporation. Knowing this information ruined the research process for me as it somehow made it personal — I didn’t want to know where the inventor worked, it brought the product too close to home. After plowing my way through one or two thousand patents, I wanted to avoid any mechanism that seemed to make perfect sense. If its capital-earning function was readily apparent to me, I avoided noting it. I skimmed right past the important chemical compounds, the life-saving medical inventions and the car parts. I preferred instead to marvel at the beauty of the language of the filler, the detritus, the doubly-anonymous inventions, which when left open to interpretation could mean so much more. This, I imagined, would be where the meaning of mundane, daily life in 1983 might be found.

In the February 8^th issue I reached the epiphany when I came across the patent for "Seamless Crotch". This looks beautiful in the Gazette. We, the taxpayers, made this happen. Its verbal simplicity was matched only by its incredibly uncomplicated design: some hips, the groin area, no seams. In August I found "Show Machine". Whereas some inventions that year demanded extensive titles like "Method of Joining Together Optical Fibre Undersea Cables" (November 1), others were pared down to the likes of "Show Machine". Unlike most patents, its title seems completely functionless and in fact, "Show" is so vague in itself there’s the outside possibility it could be a verb. "Machine" is even more of a Patent Office cop-out than "Device" or "System", as the function of the machine isn’t lucidly described in its title.

Another in this vein is "Crushing Apparatus" from November 15^th. December 13^th brought us a "Passive Dispenser", which has an almost loving, Hallmark quality about it. On the flipside, the August 13^th issue announced an invention called a "Vortex Generator", which conjures up images of pagan sorcerers casting raging tempests upon besieged commoners. "Weighing System" and August 23^rd’s "Height Gage" offer particularly vague advancements in the world of weights and measures, and what’s again baffling is that both inventions are bracketed by wordy, more explicitly described items like "Warming Device For Generating Heat By Controlled Exothermic Oxidation of Iron Powder" or "Automatic Door Closer for Cabinets" (January 4^th and 18^th, respectively). So the same goes for August 16^th’s "Papery Product" and August 23^rd’s "Universal Sucker".

The grand prize for poetic patents of 1983 came on October 4^th with the stunning appearance of "Amusement Device". Erno Rubik, the Hungarian inventor, managed to patent his Rubik’s Cube, Rubik’s Snake and Rubik’s Revenge in 1983, however his inventions in my opinion don’t stand a chance to "Amusement Device" which surely took the country by storm.

I found that with the simplest inventions often came the most poetic and precise legal descriptions, which had their own charming qualities. Take, for instance, the description to another forgotten 1983 invention, Virginia Leonhart’s "Pillow to Protect Hairdo":

"A pillow and pillow case for protecting a hairdo compressing a pillow
body made of a foam material,
the pillow being generally rectangular in shape having two sides and
two ends and a central opening,
the edges of said sides, ends and opening of said pillow
being covered by having upper and lower surface on the sides
and ends cemented together to form a rounded edge
around the outer periphery of said pillow and around said
opening,
said pillow case having a central opening and being adapted
to receive the pillow,
said pillow being cut from one said edge to said opening,
said pillow case having a central opening and the outer
edges of said pillow case being hemmed, providing a space
to receive said pillow whereby said pillow can be inserted
into said pillow case,
and a zipper around the outside of said pillow case
permitting the removal of said pillow from said pillow case."

Fascinating and eloquent too were the inventions that were unique, yet probably needless. While investigating the Patent Gazettes from 1953 (a slim volume compared to 1983’s editions), one can easily understand the functionality and necessity for the majority of inventions listed. It only stands to reason that thirty years later, technological advancement coupled with a growing, changing economy (to say nothing of the paranoid and greedy desire to protect any idea, however idiotic) would bring us the "Reversible Baseball Glove", the "Paste Dispenser Toothbrush", and the "Collapsible Toilet Shelter". Glenn Messina of Plainview, New York, patented a "Toy Nose" on August 13^th. James Crateau of Niagara Falls came up with the "Impact-Protective Suit for Raquetball". November 1^st brought the country a "Floating Arcade". On April 5^th, a "Toy Coffin". Lorin F. Sowards introduced to us a doorbell for pets on January 15^th. Michael Allen of Rockford, Illinois patented an exploding napkin that would contain an advertising message. Paul de Vries of New York invented a "briefcase piano". Talking metronomes, electronic cosmetic pencil sharpeners, dolls that grew hair and fingernails, power-assisted toilet brushes, an alarm clock that emits cologne, a muffled megaphone one can shout into if enraged — these, like it or not, represent some of the dreams of 1983’s Americans. Dreams that caught me between wanting to praise the country’s ceaseless commitment to nurturing imagination and product development, and wanting to violently retch into the nearest Patent Officer’s Datsun.

Little could prepare me for my first glimpse into 1983’s first week of registered trademarks. Thinking I would be bombarded by familiar names of toys and kid’s cereal the likes of which are batted around with smug reminiscence by every hip twenty-something, I was instead thrown face-first into the corporate marketing machine. A machine that mangles and stretches the language to both glorious and ridiculous limits in order to best sell a product.

In most cases a trademark is a protected piece of text, and unlike a patent or a copyright, a trademark can be renewed every ten years, indefinitely. In fact, in 1989 a cushy law was passed allowing corporations to trademark a name that they think they might use. Some playtime is given to them to think it over and presumably work out their marketing strategies before they make a commitment. However, as with patents there are strict rules. For instance, each name is trademarked for a specific class. Two different companies can have products with the same exact name, provided each is in a completely separate class. There can exist "Mazda" the car and "Mazda" the breath freshener and no legal ramifications would ensue, in fact the Patent & Trademarks Office spends time researching each new product name to make sure it’s not an infringement on a pre-existing trademark. Occasionally, there are problems: at one point a company wanted to trademark the name "Sveltes" in the frozen desserts class. However, they didn’t realize that the U.S. had already registered a trademark for "Vegetable Sveltes" in the wheat cracker class. The two names and classes were seen as too similar and "Sveltes" was dismissed. It’s these conundrums that would keep a Trademark Registrar up to speed.

I once again found it enjoyable to remove all reference to corporate entities while inundating myself with 1983’s most important trademarks. If anything sounded familiar, like "Lando Calrissian" or "The Crunch Bunch", my gut feeling was to ignore their significance. This was the year that trademarked the term "Imperial Egyptian Stud". I had no desire to read any further to find that it was for a breed of horses. With so many hundreds of thousands of names already trademarked, I began to marvel at the audacity of corporations’ attempts to blaze the consumer trail with product names that tested linguistic limits. For instance, in 1983 the popular use of dual-hyphenated names came to a head. There are four favorite letters businesses like to use when dually-hyphenating product names: A, O, R, and the hideously saccharine ’N. With the letter A, 1983 gave us "Vend-A-Corn", "File-A-Wax", "Perf-A-Lite", the curious "Mug-A-Rita", "Mend-A-Rail", "Pour-A-Tex", "Slush-A-Roo", "Squeeze-A -Little", "Pharm-A-Chest", "Bleach-A-Matic", "Dial-A-Cookie" and my two personal favorites: "Deck-A-Matic" and "Port-A-Torch". The letters O and R were represented by "Box-O-Graph", "But-R-cups", "Sens-O-Matic", "Sprig-O-Mint", "Bits-O-Zip", "Egg-O-Rama" and "Flav-R-Pure" among others. The sickmaking ‘N appeared countless times in such names as "Fresh-‘N-Fluffy", "Grip-‘N-Kleen" and "Stay-‘N-Touch". Some corporations took hyphens and artificial prefixes to new heights with names like "Astra Black Maxi-Run", "Plex-Tru-Coat" and "Insta-Tele-Lead".

The results of the vigor with which I began to embrace the language our country legally protected felt both enervating and crushing. Dial-A-Cookie? Was this the language of a country in decline, or had we reached a collective satori? Perhaps the key lay in our love affair with the prefix "Accu-", as 1983 saw these new names:

The food products we ate in 1983 had names like "National Porkettes" and "Potato Widgets", "Pizzarito" and "Cassolette". "Toastie Muffs" went on the market as did something called the "Squeezeburger". "Tofutti" first appeared in the stores, but what about the "Love Loaf"? This was the ephemera that one tried desperately to ignore in daily life — and one could rather successfully, unless of course you subscribed to the Patent Gazette. However, if the Government of the United States had a hand in documenting, protecting and helping to promote the term "Ricerrific!", doesn’t it then deserve to be recognized with some importance?

Hyphenations and food aside for a moment, there were a number of names and words trademarked in ’83 that deserve special attention due to their grandiose meaninglessness. On June 7^th, the U.S. trademarked the word "Funtastic". In and of itself, this should say something about the times. Semantically it’s a frail play on words by combining two words to create a non-word. There were lots of those in ’83: "Gumwich", "Shamplus" and "Wooldozers" were a few. But "Funtastic" differs as it’s descriptive — it may not even be a product. Another descriptive phrase trademarked (though not a play on words) was "Simply Delicious". Coincidentally, that same day (September 20^th), the partially descriptive "Radiant Morsels" was also trademarked. If nothing else, 1983 may have been the world’s yummiest year!

Many corporations would not stop at trademarking one or two related product names, and would press ahead with entire sentences, or at least a lengthy fragment. September 6^th saw "Floors of Timeless Beauty" trademarked. On May 17^th, and not a moment too soon, came "Just Add Water". On March 22^nd: "Quality You Can Believe In At Unbelievable Prices". On March 1^st: "We Take the Guesswork Out of Adhesives". And on January 25^th came "The Hot Dog With Sass!".

On the flip side, extraordinarily common singular words were often trademarked in ‘83, reinforcing the lack of boundaries in marketing. On May 24^th, the word "Arrogance" was trademarked. The completely generic "Popsicle" and "Put-On" followed on November 29^th. The fearless trademarking of the word "Love" appeared on September 13^th. While one can easily imagine, say, a fragrance campaign promoting a product called "Love", it brings into focus the desire of the advertising world to effectively relegate emotion to the area near the checkout stand. It’s interesting to note that emotions and abstract human concepts like "Infiniti" or "Obsession" are not difficult to find in advertising so long as they aren’t overtly negative or show human weakness. You probably won’t see a fragrance called "Grief", but the word "Crazy" was trademarked on November 11^th of ’83.

It was perversely inspiring to find so many products and names with simplified spellings of already simple words. One could only assume that there was a desire to design a product that was phonetically spelled, with the hopes that it would then be easier to purchase. Like "Krunch-Qube", which was trademarked on December 13^th, or "Shoe-Dri", from November. "Kwik-Stik", "Bak-Klene", "Roach Prufe" were other examples. 1983 also saw its share of completely redundant trademarks, like "Derma Derm" and "Americans For America", as well as an annoying assortment of names obviously geared towards children like "Whiskers Walrus", "Cranberry Cutie", "The Snuggler", "Moo Munchies" and "Cartoodles".

The more I researched, the more I wondered why popular personalities or rock bands hadn’t trademarked their names. "Billy Joel", "The Oak Ridge Boys" and a heavy metal band called "Negative Earth" did turn up, but little else. There was one rather disturbing trademark on July 19^th. It’s hard not to think of anything but brazen greed when one finds that Serac, Inc. trademarked "Sid Vicious" for "shirts, t-shirts, swimwear, underwear, hosiery, footwear, ties, belts, scarves, trousers and hats".

In continuing to practice the avoidance of any reference to a company or a product’s function, I found a slew of trademarks that were just baffling. For instance, April 12^th’s "Pumpulator". Another was "Hamulsion" — or "Cat Lube". A few bordered on the disturbing, like "Take Me Home and Love Me", or "Scarmassage", or "Milk it, Instead". In many cases, even if I balked and investigated the name of the product’s company, its purpose was still unclear and the name of the company was a typically anonymous industrial conglomerate. I remained stuck with "Crab-Guard" and "Poultry-Vac".

After my research of the year 1983, I ventured to look through the February 2002 trademarks, expecting to find it rife with empty slogans such as "Revenge Osama" or "We Stand Proud". And although the weekly editions of the trademark section of the Patent Gazette are at least a third larger than 1983, with many more thousands of trademarked words and phrases each week, the quality of names remained about the same with a noticeable preponderance of ".com" endings. And in investigating the online search engine of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s website, I found that 1983’s promising trademarked names "Vamoose!" and "The Bruncher" were now classified as "dead"; free to be used once again by an inspired ad exec with something to sell. In fact, let’s hope that the government’s Patent Gazettes get thicker and thicker over time, forcing new, unheard-of variables on advertising language. And let’s hope the language continues to seep into our daily lexicon until it is accepted to spell "bake" without an e, and "clean" with a k. One never knows when it may become important to unconsciously pepper our speech with references to products.

In investigating Patents and Trademarks over a significant span of time one can see how life is concurrently becoming more complicated and simplified. Each new thousand patents show an obsessive commitment to technological advancement coupled with just as fierce a drive to dumb them down in the language of trademarks; Point A being an advancement in the mechanical processing of butter, Point B is something called "Wild ‘N Creamy". Plowing through a year of patents displays the imaginations, warts and all, of both innovative and simply curious men and women, as well as the devious and inept tactics of corporate entities, with the U.S. Government guiding their conversation like a proud father.