The first real protection for women

Today I'm celebrating the first patent awarded to a female in the US

The Patent Act of 1790 opened the door for people to protect their inventions with a patent. However, because in many states women could not legally own property independent of their husbands, many women inventors never filed for patents to protect their inventions. On May 5, 1809, Mary Kies was the first woman to receive a US patent. She obtained a patent for her method of weaving straw with silk and thread. Using her new method, Mary Kies could make and sell her hats and, according to US law, no one else could sell any created just like hers.

Have you ever invented anything? I once invented a practical teaching tool to use during my segment of a group presentation scheduled in one of my graduate classes. I once taught secondary mathematics for one year in a high school in south Texas and also caught computer programming while a graduate student at Texas A&M University. I thought that the tool I developed would have been useful to me in my former teaching jobs. I demonstrated my invention and obtained some feedback from a couple of my friends who were currently teachers. I refined the design a bit. Then, my friends helped me to create enough of the tools to use in the classroom. The tool proved to me to be very useful for its purpose. Upon completion of the group presentation, the professor generally asked questions and offered feedback to the group members. He asked three questions about my segment:

1. Tonya, did you create this tool that was used today? Yes, I replied
2. Has anyone in this room ever seen a tool similar to what Tonya used today? no one
3. How many people in this room would use Tonya's tool in their classrooms? all

The professor then had one comment: Tonya, I hope that you leave this classroom tonight and immediately work on your patent. Of course, I was very surprised to hear the feedback about my tool, but was very excited too. For awhile in my spare time (which was quite limited since I was working full-time while attending graduate school for my PhD), I did a little work to investigate the possibilities of a patent. I scoured numerous education product catalogs looking for a tool similar to mine (finding none) and performed a small patent search. It indeed appeared that I had created a tool that actually did not exist. My preliminary market research seemed supportive too: feedback from my teacher friends, plus an entire classroom of teachers with significant experience supporting my tool. However, I also became aware of the time and cost to obtain a patent, especially when I did not really have any plans for manufacturing. I was so busy in my career and trying to complete my graduate work that I let those challenges overcome me. Unfortunately, it would not be the first time to be accused of having a great idea, but not following through. I still have my file that describes my invention and about once a year I look at the neat invention and wonder what-if. I still have not seen anything similar to it and still believe that it would be a popular, useful tool for teachers.

Today, my learning of Mary Kies' achievement has definitely got me thinking again about my own invention. Perhaps I should put my project management skills into action and develop an action plan to protect the idea and to actually make it available to educators today. After all, since I've practically lost most of my pension (it was recently frozen) and all the medical retiree benefits that I had planned to enjoy after 30 years of dedicated service, I may need the profits from the sale of the product based on my invention for my retirement years.

Image credit: The Library of Congress