Thank These Innovative Women for Inventions We Commonly Use Today
Rosenthal IP LAW
Although the right for women to vote in the US didn’t arrive until 1920, women were given the right to apply for a patent at the same time as men in 1790, when the Patent Act passed, allowing anyone to petition for protection of their original inventions and designs. This paved the way for Mary Dixon Kies to become the first woman, in 1809, to successfully file a patent that belonged to her. It was for a process of interweaving silk or thread into straw to make fashion-forward straw bonnets.
Today we’re giving a very grateful shout out to the following 7 women whose ingenuity gave us everyday items of convenience we can’t live without.
- The Call Button. Miriam Benjamin, a schoolteacher, invented the “gong-and-signal chair” in 1888, which made it possible to call for assistance while seated, anywhere attendants were needed. From noisy train stations and hospitals to hotels, theaters, and offices, this handy tool allowed users to receive services wherever desired. The next time you’re on a flight and want to hail the flight attendant, thank Miriam as you press that call button above your
head.
- Central Heating. Alice H. Parker filed a patent for her heating system in 1919, which involved drawing cool air into a gas furnace, then passing it through a heat exchanger, which then transported the heated air throughout the house via ducts. Now using natural gas instead of wood, her invention changed the game for domestic heating.
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS. Hedy Lamarr, the actress who starred in Samson and Delilah, Ecstasy, and Ziegfeld Girl in the 1930s and 40s, was involved in developing a device that would prevent enemy ships from blocking torpedo signals during the Second World War. The invention allowed radio guidance transmitters and the torpedo's receiver to jump between frequencies simultaneously, which became known as "frequency hopping." Today, this is known as spread spectrum technology, and it gave way to the development of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
- Windshield Wipers. Mary E. Anderson made her living being a rancher and real estate developer. However, in 1903, Anderson came up with a system that could automatically wash cars, which then gave way to the windshield wiper.
- Car Heater. Margaret A. Wilcox made traveling far more comfortable when, in 1893, she filed a patent for a car heating system. Originally designed for public railway cars, this technology has been consistently updated over the years and led to the car heaters we appreciate today. This heating system involved running a channel of air through the engine, where it was heated, and then sending it back into the rail cars.
- Ice Cream Maker. Nancy Johnson invented a device in 1843, the Artificial Freezer, which was the first hand-cranked ice cream churn. It sped up the amount of time it took to make ice cream or sorbet. Prior to her ingenuity, ice cream was made using very intensive labor and it often took a person hours to make. Funny enough, at that time, one could make the frozen treat but we’d have to wait a few years to find a way to store it so that it remained frozen since refrigerators hadn’t been invented yet.
- Caller ID. Shirley Ann Jackson, a physicist, is responsible for making caller ID accessible to all of us. In 1976, Jackson was hired by AT&T, where she researched in a number of fields. From this research, Jackson developed caller ID technology, something we wouldn't want to live without today.
Not all patent filers started out as engineers or scientists – as you can see, they came from all walks of life and had one thing in common – the strong desire to pursue their creative idea to fruition.
Registering a trademark or applying for a patent is an endeavor that has become more detailed and intricate over the years. There are enough possible twists and turns in the life of your application to deserve guidance from a professional. I work with my clients from initial consultation, to understand their product and intention, and through every single step, roadblock, and detour.
If the thought of registering a trademark or applying for a patent has been your dream and passion, let’s discuss how to make it happen.
When was the last time you checked what’s being sold online under your brand name? With Black Friday on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, now is a good time to look. Last year, Cyber Week (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) brought in $44.2 billion in U.S. online sales, and Cyber Monday set a single-day record at $14.25 billion, according to Adobe. Counterfeit products online are part of the picture too. In fiscal year 2025, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported seizing nearly 79 million counterfeit items, which would have carried a retail value of over $7.3 billion if genuine. ( source , digitalcommerce , hstoday.us ) Why Counterfeits Surge During the Holidays Holiday shoppers are looking for deals and buying quickly. Counterfeiters take advantage of that urgency. UL Standards & Engagement’s 2024 Holiday Safety Guide found that 40% of holiday shoppers had been fooled into buying a counterfeit at least once. That matters to you as a brand owner, because CBP says counterfeits can pose health, safety, and economic risks and hurt U.S. businesses. What Online Trademark Infringement Looks Like It can include: Counterfeit listings on online marketplaces using your name and logo Look-alike websites that borrow your trademark. One security firm found a network of 198 fake sites illegally using famous brands’ trademarks ahead of a Black Friday sale. Social media posts promoting knockoffs of your products Under the Lanham Act, a counterfeit mark is identical or substantially indistinguishable from a registered trademark (15 U.S.C. § 1127). ( winston ) That word, registered , matters. Why Trademark Registration Matters Using your brand name for years doesn't automatically give you access to every enforcement tool. Several important protections require federal registration: Amazon Brand Registry: Amazon’s U.S. eligibility page calls for an active registered trademark, or a pending application filed through its IP Accelerator program. Amazon also asks you to show the mark on your products or packaging. Requirements can vary by Amazon store, so check the current rules before you enroll. CBP e-Recordation: This puts your mark on file with Customs so the agency can detain and seize counterfeit imports. It requires a mark registered on the Principal Register, so pending applications don’t qualify. The fee is $190 per class of goods, and renewal is $80 per previously recorded class. Statutory damages: In a counterfeiting case, you can elect set damages instead of proving your actual losses. The range is $1,000 to $200,000 per counterfeit mark per type of goods or services, and up to $2,000,000 if the use was willful (15 U.S.C. § 1117(c)). ( govinfo , govinfo ) A registration filed today won't protect you this Black Friday, but it can help protect your brand in the years ahead. Isn't the Marketplace Responsible? Not entirely . In Tiffany (NJ) Inc. v. eBay Inc., 600 F.3d 93 (2d Cir. 2010) , the court found that general knowledge of counterfeits on a platform wasn't enough to hold eBay liable. Specific knowledge of infringing listings mattered. ( arnoldporter ) In practice, brand owners still need to identify and report counterfeit listings. The INFORM Consumers Act, effective since June 2023, also requires marketplaces to collect and verify information from certain high-volume third-party sellers, making it harder for counterfeiters to operate anonymously. ( ftc ) Your Pre-Black Friday Checklist Here's what to do this month: Review your registrations. Make sure they cover your products and brand assets. Search online marketplaces. Check social media and third-party listings, too. Consider CBP recordation. Especially if your products are manufactured or shipped overseas. Identify authorized sellers. Make it easy for customers to find genuine products. Document suspicious listings. Save dated screenshots, seller information, and URLs. How Rosenthal IP Law Can Help Trademark clearance, registration, and strategy are at the heart of what I do. For enforcement matters such as marketplace takedowns and ongoing monitoring, I coordinate with trusted colleagues to connect clients with the right specialists. If you'd like to know where your brand stands before the holiday rush, contact Rosenthal IP Law to review your trademark portfolio and discuss an online brand protection plan. Protecting your brand starts with knowing what you own and making sure it's registered.
“ I made my logo with AI in about thirty seconds. Can I actually protect it? ” I hear some version of this more and more. The short answer is probably yes. The reason why says a lot about the difference between trademark and copyright. Trademark Doesn’t Care Who (or What) Made It In our post on AI and copyright , we covered Thaler v. Perlmutter, the case confirming that copyright requires human authorship. Content generated without meaningful human input generally can’t be copyrighted. Trademark asks a different question. It isn’t about how a mark was created. It’s about what the mark does in the marketplace: whether customers see it and associate it with your business. The USPTO doesn’t ask whether a person, a designer, or an AI tool came up with your AI-generated brand name or logo. It asks three things: Does it identify your business as the source of your goods or services? Is it distinctive, rather than generic or merely descriptive? Does it avoid a likelihood of confusion with someone else’s existing mark? If the answers are yes, an AI logo trademark application stands on the same footing as any other. Where AI Logos Run Into Trouble The problem usually isn’t the AI. It’s what AI tools tend to produce. They draw on enormous datasets, so they often generate designs that resemble existing marks or lean on generic industry imagery. Type “cloud” or “data” into a logo generator and you’ll see the same icons and circuit patterns again and again. The tool isn’t checking the USPTO database before it hands you a design. That makes a clearance search more important when a logo came from AI, not less. A “unique” logo that turns out to be confusingly similar to a registered mark can mean a refused application, or worse, a cease-and-desist letter after you’ve printed the signage. What You’ll Need to Show A few practical points if you want to trademark an AI-generated logo: Real use in commerce. The USPTO expects to see the mark actually in use, such as on packaging, a live website, or advertising. AI mockups or “coming soon” pages are not sufficient. A person or legal entity as owner. Only people and registered businesses can own a trademark, never the AI tool. Distinctiveness. A generic name paired with a generic icon gives you very little legal strength, however polished it looks. The Copyright Wrinkle Here’s where the two areas of law collide. Even after your AI-generated logo is trademarked, the artwork itself may not be copyrightable, per the same human-authorship rule from Thaler. Trademark stops others from using your mark to identify competing goods or services, but it doesn’t automatically stop someone from copying the design in every context. If a human designer meaningfully edits or builds on the AI output, that human contribution may carry its own copyright protection on top of the trademark. That’s a good reason to have a person put real creative work into the final version rather than using the raw AI output as-is. Before You Build a Brand Around It If you’ve generated a logo or name with AI and you’re about to spend real money on signage, packaging, and marketing, the order of operations matters: clearance search first, document your actual use, and then file. Skipping the search is the most common way an AI-generated brand identity turns into an expensive rebrand a year later. Whether you’re protecting a new logo or sorting out trademark AI-generated content more broadly, brand protection starts before you launch, not after someone else files first. Contact Rosenthal IP Law today to schedule a consultation on trademarking your AI-generated logo or brand name before the signage goes up.
If your team has been leaning on AI tools to generate blog posts, product images, or social content, here's a question worth asking before you publish the next one: who actually owns that content? For a lot of businesses, the honest answer is nobody, and that's a bigger problem than it sounds. The Basic Question The U.S. Copyright Office has been studying this since 2023, collecting public input and issuing guidance in stages. Its conclusion has stayed consistent throughout: copyright protection requires human authorship, and that requirement hasn't changed just because the tool doing the work became a lot more sophisticated. The case Thaler v. Perlmutter addressed this at the Federal level. A computer scientist generated an artwork entirely through an AI system and applied to register a copyright for the artwork, listing the AI system itself as the author. The Copyright Office refused registration, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that refusal in 2025, and on March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. That left the ruling standing: human authorship is a "bedrock requirement" of copyright, and content generated without meaningful human involvement simply falls outside of copyrightability. The harder, more practical question, one the Copyright Office has addressed in detail, is what happens when a human is the one typing the prompts. Its answer: prompts alone, no matter how detailed, generally don't make the person who wrote them the "author" of the output. A prompt functions more like an instruction than an expression, since the AI system is still the one making the real expressive choices, what the final image looks like, how a sentence is phrased, in between the prompt and the result.