Manufacturers use trademarks to distinguish their products from others. In the U.S., a trademark can be registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for 10 years and 3 months, and can be renewed every ten years. Do not confuse trademarks with trade names. Back to Frequently Asked Questions Utility, Design, and Plant patents. Utility patents cover new processes, machines, manufactured articles, and chemical compositions.
Design patents cover new ornamental designs for manufactured articles.
Plant patents cover newly invented, discovered, or asexually reproduced plants. The UW Engineering Library has no information on land patents. There is a national web site for land patent information. The databases for each state enable researchers to conduct sophisticated cross-field queries to trace the initial transfer of land titles from the Federal government to individuals. Historians may conduct genealogical searches to associate an individual with a particular location during a specific time.